Mass vaccination won’t face challenges: FM

The government programme to vaccinate 80 per cent people of the country in phases would not face any big challenges in near future as Covex committed to supply six crore doses of vaccines by December 2021, Foreign Ministry sources said.
"The vaccine supply remains steady and there will be no problem to get adequate vaccine doses," Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said adding that 'vaccination for 1 crore people has been arranged within a week.'
Covax and the World Bank will accelerate Covid-19 vaccine supply for developing countries through a new financing mechanism that builds on Gavi's newly designed Advance Market Commitment (AMC) cost-sharing arrangement. This allows AMC countries to purchase doses beyond the fully donor-subsidized doses they are already receiving from Covax, a WHO release said.
"This important and timely financing mechanism, made possible now by the World Bank and Gavi teaming up on the AMC cost-sharing arrangement, will allow Covax to unlock additional doses for low- and middle-income countries," said Dr Seth Berkley, CEO, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
 "As we move beyond initial targets and work to support countries' efforts to protect increasingly large portions of their populations, World Bank financing will help us advance further towards our goal of bringing Covid-19 under control," he said.
Since the latter half of June, the number of new infections of Covid-19 in the country has been
sharply increasing, approximately 11.3 million doses of vaccine have been administrated in Bangladesh, and only about 6.7 per cent of the population has completed the vaccinations. The Gavi-Covex grant of vaccines is a response to the urgent situation where there remain those without any prospects of receiving the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
"Bangladesh wants to vaccinate 80 per cent people of the country in phases," Momen told journalists earlier.
In the first phase, Bangladesh was supposed to get 1 crore 27 lakh doses of vaccine from Covax. However, this is currently not possible due to the global vaccination crisis, he added.
Meanwhile, the USA is set to provide 25 lakh doses of coronavirus vaccine invented by Moderna, Inc, an American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, under Covax platform. On May 31, 1 lakh 620 doses of Pfizer vaccine were sent by Covax.
"We're working together in a coordinated way and we're handling the Covid-19 situation very successfully so far," he said.   
As many as 70 lakh vaccine jabs of the Chinese state-owned enterprise bought by the government arrived in three phases. Seventeen lakh more doses of Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine purchased by the Bangladesh government have reached Dhaka on Tuesday.  Apart from this, China gifted Bangladesh around 11 lakh vaccine doses of the firm in May.
A consignment of 245,200 Oxford-AstraZeneca doses from Japan have arrived in Bangladesh. Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Naoki Ito said Japan would provide a total of 3 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Bangladesh.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said that half of the targeted people would be vaccinated within months if the current trend continues.
Appreciating the Health Ministry for its competency and efficiency in managing the vaccination programme nationwide, Momen said they (Health Ministry) are doing an excellent job in the last few days.
"We are working together handling the Covid-19 situation very successfully," Momen said.
"Challenges are coming and we are facing those challenges, I think, pretty effectively and efficiently," Foreign Minister said and added that the vaccine supply remains steady and there will be no problem to get adequate amount of vaccine doses as Covax is committed to supply vaccine to us."