Bangladesh: Covid vaccination under a cloud

Published 15 Jan,2021 via The Financial Express - Like many other countries, Bangladesh is also putting much effort into rolling out a vaccine to intensify the fight against deadly coronavirus. The government has already arranged to get 30 million doses of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute of India (SII). Bangladesh is also expecting to get some 68 million doses in 2021 from the GAVI Alliance under the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility of COVAX facility of the World Health Organisation. Initially, some vaccine of Pfizer-BioNTech may be available under the facility.

Beximco Pharmaceuticals, a leading pharma company in the country, is appointed as the sole distributor of the Indian version of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. It is labelled as Covishield in India and developed by the SII. However, uncertainty on the vaccine's availability emerged due to conflicting moves and statements by the relevant quarters. Lack of clear communication also reflects the non-transparency mechanism of procuring or collecting the much-required vaccine. Some speculations on non-availability of the vaccine also spread in the air creating a lack of trust.

By dismissing the speculations, both senior government officials and head of Beximco asserted that the first consignment of the vaccine would arrive in the third week of this month. To stop the speculations on non-availability of committed vaccines, the government also has intensified its effort to open more channel to procure vaccines from other sources. It has also approved Global Biotech, a local entity, to produce its home-grown coronavirus vaccine for a human trial.