By Farid Hossain
April 20, 2021
Dhaka:: Bangladesh is exploring import of Covid-19 vaccine from China and Russia as India, the country’s only supplier of the vaccine, has halted shipments because of growing domestic demand amid a surge of the pandemic.
The government said on Tuesday that a high-level official committee has been tasked to find alternative sources of vaccines amid uncertainty of shipments from Serum Institute of India (SII), so far the sole supplier of Oxford-Astra-Zeneca jabs called Covishield.
“There is uncertainty of vaccine availability and so we have formed a five-member committee to find alternative sources” said country’s top health official ABM Khurshid Alam amid reports that the government has now China’s Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V in their consideration.
China has already offered to supply 60 lakhs of Sinopharm vaccine through a third party. Dhaka has asked its embassy in Moscow to explore import of Sputnik V vaccine.
Though still unapproved by WHO, the Chinese vaccine is being used by UAE, Egypt and Pakistan.
Experts say they support the government’s efforts to find alternative sources of the vaccine.
Prof Nazrul Islam, a member of the National Technical Advisory Committee (NTAC) on Covid-19, said: “There is uncertainty about Bangladesh’s ability to get vaccines because it is dependent on a single organization with no alternative. We think we should import Sputnik. This will reduce our vaccine crisis right now.
Bangladesh has signed a deal with SII to get 30 million doses of vaccine from SII in six instalments. It has so far got only 7(seven) million doses. No official shipments have arrived in the last two months as the Indian government is prioritizing domestic needs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi gifted 3.2 million Covishield vaccine to Bangladesh before his high-profile visit to Bangladesh in late March. Thus Dhaka’s stock rose to 10.2 million doses.
The stock can last until end of May, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
DGHS Non-Communicable Disease Control Director Dr Mohammad Robed Amin said “If 100,000 people are vaccinated every day, the remaining vaccines will last around 20 days, hardly a month.”
Neither the Department of Health nor Beximco, the official distributor of the vaccine in Bangladesh, knows when the next shipment of vaccines will arrive.
Experts said the vaccine crisis was not limited to Bangladesh as the entire world was scrambling for answers to Covid-19.
According to the DGHS, about 6.7 million people have so far received the Covid-19 vaccine in Bangladesh as there is a rush for vaccine takers amid a spike in the pandemic. Bangladesh logged more than 4,000 new infections and 112 deaths on Monday.
Bangladesh has been under a nationwide lockdown since April 14 shutting down office and public transportation to tackle the spread of the virus.
–INDIA NEWS STREAM