International vaccine institute to be built in Bangladesh: PM

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday said the government will set up an international vaccine institute to produce vaccines, including the Covid-19 ones, in Bangladesh.

Sheikh Hasina said this in parliament while replying to a tabled question from Awami League MP Ahasanul Islam Titu (Tangail-6).

She said the government will sign an agreement with South Korea to set up the vaccine institute and the issues relating to ratification, accession and approval of the agreement by the cabinet are under process.

The prime minister said the government has taken an initiative to produce Covid-19 vaccines in the country alongside collection from foreign sources to check the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

Hasina said government-to government (G2G) negotiations are underway with the countries that have developed vaccines for transferring technology to this end.

She said the capacity of three firms -- Incepta Pharmaceuticals, Popular Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Pharmaceuticals -- have already been assessed over the production of Covid-19 vaccines.

Globe Biotech Ltd is working on a Covid vaccine. “The vaccine developed by Globe Biotech is now at the trial stage,” she said.

Replying to another question from Jatiya Party MP Fakhrul Imam, the prime minister said the government has so far approved the emergency use of five vaccines for their import.

These vaccines are Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm (China), Sputnik-V (Russia), Pfizer-BioNTech (USA/Germany) and Crona Vac (China).

She said Bangladesh has so far collected a total of 1,080,620 shots of Covid vaccines from different foreign sources. Of these, 10.2 ((1.02 crore) million shots, including the gifted ones, came from India, while 500,000 from Sinopharm and 10,620 doses from Pfizer.

As of 5 June, a total of 5,822,177 people were given the first doses of vaccines, while 4,209,510 given the second doses, said the prime minister.