Aiming to check the spread of the rampaging Delta variant of Covid-19, Bangladesh on Saturday kicked off another phase of its mass vaccination drive aimed at inoculating 3.5 million people in six days, leaving behind months of uncertainty when the country had run out of vaccines.

In a massive inoculation exercise, Covid shots will be administered simultaneously in 4,600 unions, 1,054 municipality areas and 433 wards of the city corporations, Director General of Health Services ABM Khurshid Alam told the media.

Armed with fresh stocks of vaccine doses, the government has set a target of inoculating 80 percent of the nation’s total population of around 166 million. Each person would be administered two doses.

Some 32,706 vaccinators and 48,459 volunteers have been roped in to make the vaccine drive a success.

Those above 25 years of age will be vaccinated, but priority would be given to the elderly, women and physically challenged persons.

“Those living in inaccessible remote areas will also be brought under the ambit of the drive,” Khurshid said.

The government has decided to give Covid jabs to Rohingya refugees above 55 years between August 10 and 12.

Since the inauguration of the mass inoculation drive in Bangladesh on 7 February, some 4,443,517 people have been fully vaccinated with two shots and 14,733,314 people have received the first dose.

Earlier in April, the government was forced to suspend administering the first dose of the Covid vaccine after the Indian government – faced with a severe second wave of the viral disease - deferred the shipment of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to Bangladesh.

On 13 December 2020, Bangladesh had signed a deal with the Serum Institute of India to purchase 30 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The country was supposed to receive five million shots a month as per the deal.

Foreign minister AK Abdul Momen on Thursday said Bangladesh has a stock of 12.3 million vaccine doses and some of them (Oxford-AstraZeneca) will be kept for the second dose.

He said Bangladesh will receive another consignment of 3.4 million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine next week and six million doses of the us-made Pfizer vaccine in the first week of September.

Bangladesh recorded 248 more deaths due to Covid-19 on Friday, up from 212 logged a week earlier. The number of news cases was12,606.

The country has been reporting over 200 single-day fatalities for the past two weeks as it races to head off a surge in Covid-19 cases driven by the unrelenting Delta variant.

After weathering the first wave of the virus, Bangladesh’s health services are now stretched dangerously thin.

(SAM)