ZOOMBANGLA DESK: Health and Family Welfare Minister Zahid Maleque today said Bangladesh will get 50 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccine each week till November, this year.

“We have intensified our efforts to purchase COVID-19 jabs to accelerate the ongoing vaccination campaign to contain the deadly virus,” he made the comments while visiting Bangladesh Dental Surgeon examination at Government Titumir College in the city.

The health minister said the government has decided to purchase 16.5 core more COVID-19 vaccines from China and WHO facilities. These vaccines are expected to arrive in Bangladesh by January next year, he added.

“Bangladesh will get 2 crore doses of Sinopharm vaccines from China each month…meaning six crore jabs of Sinopharm will arrive in the country within three months,” Maleque added.

The health ministry sources said the government is planning to vaccinate 1.5 to 2 crore people from the next month.

The DGHS sources said the country already reached or finalized deals with different countries and companies as part of the procurement process to vaccinate the target 130 million people by 2022. As of September 10, Bangladesh collected nearly 40 million vaccine doses, they added

Bangladesh has so far approved eight COVID-19 vaccines to control the deadly disease.

The approved COVID-19 vaccines are from Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, CoronaVac, Pfizer, Covishield, Sputnik V, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm. (BSS)