Vaccine stock to get a boost

The country's stock of Covid-19 vaccine today is getting an additional 12 lakh Oxford-AstraZeneca shots given by the Indian government as a gift.

"We have been informed that the Indian prime minister will bring about 12 lakh doses of the vaccine during his visit," Prof ABM Khurshid Alam, director general of Directorate General of Health Services, said yesterday.

Indian PM Narendra Modi will arrive in Dhaka today to join the celebrations of the birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the golden jubilee of Bangladesh's independence.

As of yesterday, the government had a stock of 38,60,544 doses of the vaccine.

The country on January 21 received 20 lakh doses as a token of friendship from India.

However, the third shipment of the doses purchased by Bangladesh from Serum Institute of India might not arrive on time.

"We have yet to get a schedule of when the doses will arrive. We hope that we will get a considerable amount early next month," Nazmul Hassan Papon, managing director of Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd, the local agent of Serum, said.

The country is expected to receive 10,908,000 shots of the Oxford vaccine by May, thanks to the global arrangement called Covax, he added.

There will be no shortage of vaccine if the doses from Covax and Serum arrive as expected, Papon told The Daily Star.

Global media report that New Delhi reportedly temporarily restricted all major exports of the AstraZeneca vaccine made by Serum to meet demands at home.

Contacted, Health minister Zahid Maleque told The Daily Star yesterday that Bangladesh and India have a contract. And the former had made the payments in advance.

"As per our contract, we want the vaccine. We are in close contact with Beximco..."

He added, "Beximco is talking about a schedule [of the shipement], but they can't say exactly when the instalment will arrive."

 Asked about the Covax vaccine, the minister said, "The doses will arrive in instalments by May. But we have yet to get a specific date. We don't know when we will get the shots."

Asked whether there are risks of disruption in the vaccination programme, he said, "It is too early to say that... We don't want to stop the inoculation right now. But we are emphasising the second dose. If we don't get the vaccines on time, we might have to redesign the vaccination programme."

The minister said they have written to different ministries to take steps to prevent crowding at any place across the country.

DAILY NEW CASES

New cases have continued to rise for the third consecutive day yesterday.

DGHS reported 3,587 new cases detected in the 24 hours preceding 8:00am yesterday. This was the daily highest in the last nine months. On July 2 last year, the number of new cases was 4,019.

The number of confirmed cases rose to 5,84,395 yesterday.

In the same 24 hours, 34 people died from Covid-19, taking the death toll to 8,797. The death rate stands at 1.51 percent.

Against a total of 27,045 tests yesterday, the positivity rate was 13.26 percent while the overall positivity rate was 12.94 percent.

At least 1,985 Covid-19 patients recovered during the period.

The total number of recoveries now stands at 5,29,894 with a recovery rate of 90.67 percent.

Among the 34 deceased, 25 were male and nine female.

One of them was aged between 11 and 20 years, one between 21 and 30, two between 31 and 40, one between 41 and 50, 11 between 51 and 60, and 18 were over 60.