2nd dose Covid vaccine from April 7

Staff Reporter :
The second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine will be administered from April 7, Health Minister Zahid Maleque has said.
“As per the directives of the World Health Organisation, we will give the second dose of covid vaccines to the people eight weeks after giving the first dose. We have started the vaccination on February 7, and as such, we have decided to start the second doses of jab administering on April 7,” said the health minister at a press conference in his Secretariat office on Tuesday.
He also said that 23.80 lakh people have so far been vaccinated in the country. The country also received 20 lakh doses of covid vaccines from India’s Serum institute instead of 50 lakh in second shipment.
“We supposed to receive 50 lakh doses of vaccine in the shipment, but we received 20 lakh doses. We have put pressure on India’s Serum Institute to make up the gap, and they said they would increase supply next month” .A total of 24,91,053 persons have received their first doses of the vaccine and around 36,91,235 people have registered for vaccination till Monday.. Zahid Maleque said that some local pharmaceutical companies applied for approval to supply the vaccine. “We are thinking about the local pharmaceutical companies and holding discussions at various levels. We will take a decision after discussion with the high-ups of the government on the matter,” he said. Refering to the government’s plans for vaccination ahead of the reopening of universities, the minister said, “Teachers will be immunized first. The government will decide about the students soon.”
Meanwhile, Bangladesh received the second batch of two million doses of Covid-19 vaccine from India in the early hours of Tuesday.
On November 5 last year, Bangladesh signed a deal with SII for the procurement of 30 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. As per contract, Serum Institute will supply five million doses each month. The second batch from SII will be kept in stock for the time being, health officials have said.
Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport Chief Health Officer Dr Shahriar Sajjad confirmed that Bangladesh had received a total of nine million doses from India, so far.
The special flight carrying the second shipment of the vaccine landed at the Dhaka Airport at 12:25am on Tuesday. The shipment was received by Beximco Pharmaceuticals, who took it to their Gazipur warehouse.
Besides, SII CEO Adar Poonawalla recently announced that their shipments to foreign governments might be delayed as they had been directed to prioritize India’s domestic requirements.
However, Indian health authorities said that they had not given any such directions to SII, and other countries would eventually get the vaccine, but in smaller consignments.
On the other hand, the daily test positivity rate for Covid-19 in the country has jumped above 3 precent again in the last 24 hours till Tuesday morning.
The latest daily infection rate was recorded at 3.13 percent while it was 3.30 percent on Monday.
Until Friday, the test positivity rate remained below 3 percent for four consecutive days, before it jumped to 3.14 percent on Saturday and dropped to 2.33 percent on Sunday.
On February 15, the infection rate rose to 3.15 percent, after remaining below the mark for 10 days straight.
The daily test positivity in the country has been in single digits since December 19.
Bangladesh has detected 399 new cases of the coronavirus in a 24-hour period, taking the tally of infections to 544,116.
Besides, the death toll jumped to 8,374 after 18 fatalities from COVID-19 were registered until 8 am Tuesday, according to data released by the government.
Another 828 people recovered from the illness through treatment at home and in hospital care in the same period, bringing the tally of recoveries to 492,887.