COVID-19 vaccines
Covid-19: Bangladesh again sees steep rise in deaths, new cases
Bangladesh on Wednesday witnessed 37 more Covid-19 related deaths in 24 hours until Wednesday morning.
The death tally now stands at 12,248 while the mortality rate remains static at 1.56%.
Besides, the country saw 1,608 new cases with an increased number of tests as 20,538 samples were tested during the period, said a handout of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
The infection rate rose to 7.83% from Tuesday’s 7.55%.
Also read: Govt approves proposal to import Sinofarm vaccine
The country reported 30 deaths from the virus on Tuesday and 32 on Monday.
Among the latest fatalities, 24 are men and 13 are women.
Biden boosting world vaccine sharing commitment to 80M doses
President Joe Biden said Monday that the U.S. will share an additional 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines with the world in the coming six weeks as domestic demand for shots drops and global disparities in distribution have grown more evident.
The doses will come from existing production of Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson vaccine stocks, marking the first time that U.S.-controlled doses of vaccines authorized for use in the country will be shared overseas. It will boost the global vaccine sharing commitment from the U.S. to 80 million.
“We know America will never be fully safe until the pandemic that’s raging globally is under control,” Biden said at the White House.
The announcement comes on top of the Biden’s administration’s prior commitment to share about 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not yet authorized for use in the U.S., by the end of June. The AstraZeneca doses will be available to ship once they clear a safety review by the Food and Drug Administration.
Biden also tapped COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients to lead the administration’s efforts to share doses with the world.
Also read: Bangladesh’s request for vaccine doses under active consideration: Miller
“Our nation’s going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world,” Biden said. He added that, compared to other countries like Russia and China that have sought to leverage their domestically produced doses, “we will not use our vaccines to secure favors from other countries.”
The Biden administration hasn’t yet said how the new commitment of vaccines will be shared or which countries will receive them.
To date, the U.S. has shared about 4.5 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico. Additional doses of the Pfizer vaccine manufactured in the U.S. have begun to be exported as the company has met its initial contract commitments to the federal government.
Also read: Will do our best to support vaccine rollout in neighbouring countries: India
The U.S. has faced growing pressure to share more of its vaccine stockpile with the world as interest in vaccines has waned domestically.
“While wealthy countries continue ramping up vaccinations, less than 1 percent of COVID-19 vaccine doses globally have been administered to people in low-income countries,” said Tom Hart the acting CEO of the ONE Campaign. “The sooner the US and other wealthy countries develop a coordinated strategy for sharing vaccine doses with the world’s most vulnerable, the faster we will end the global pandemic for all.”
More than 157 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 123 million are full vaccinated against the virus. Biden hopes the U.S. will have 160 million people fully vaccinated by July Fourth.
Globally, more than 3.3 million people are confirmed to have died from the coronavirus. The U.S. has seen the largest confirmed loss of life from COVID-19, at more than 586,000 people.
Britain yet to decide on Pfizer offer to vaccinate Olympians
The British government is still deciding whether to accept an offer from Pfizer to fast-track Olympic and Paralympic athletes for coronavirus vaccines.
Jabs are only being given to Britons aged 38 or older - though this will be extended to those over 35 from next week - with younger people only getting inoculated if they have an underlying health condition.
It s sensitive because the philosophy has been based on age and that s been proved to be the right thing, British Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston said. The biggest indicator is age is the biggest factor and of course Pfizer have offered for the Olympics and we ve asked them about that.
Pfizer, which developed a vaccine with BioNTech, said earlier this month said that it would donate doses to inoculate athletes and officials preparing for the Tokyo games with the rescheduled Olympics due to open on July 23.
While the Olympics begin in less than 10 weeks, Britain has a policy of delaying the second dose by up to 12 weeks to free up vaccines for more people. Britain announced Sunday that more than 20 million people have now received both doses. The two shots of the Pfizer vaccines were intended to be given three to four weeks apart.
The government s vaccine rollout has been excellent and, coupled with the IOC s donation of the Pfizer vaccine for athletes, means we are hopeful of getting all athletes vaccinated before they travel to Tokyo, British Olympic Association chairman Hugh Robertson said. It is important for this to happen soon, to assure our hosts in Tokyo that we are doing all we can to keep their population safe.
Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are among the European nations to have already offered vaccines to delegations headed to Tokyo.
Japan has been struggling to slow infections ahead of the games and expanded a coronavirus state of emergency from six areas, including Tokyo, to nine on Friday.
Panel suggests WHO should have more power to stop pandemics
A panel of independent experts who reviewed the World Health Organization’s response to the coronavirus pandemic says the U.N. health agency should be granted “guaranteed rights of access” in countries to investigate emerging outbreaks, a contentious idea that would give it more powers and require member states to give up some of theirs.
In a report released Wednesday, the panel faulted countries worldwide for their sluggish response to COVID-19, saying most waited to see how the virus was spreading until it was too late to contain it, leading to catastrophic results. The group also slammed the lack of global leadership and restrictive international health laws that “hindered” WHO’s response to the pandemic.
Some experts criticized the panel for failing to hold WHO and others accountable for their actions during COVID-19, describing that as “an abdication of responsibility.”
Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University said the panel “fails to call out bad actors like China, perpetuating the dysfunctional WHO tradition of diplomacy over frankness, transparency and accountability.”
The panel was led by former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who were tapped by WHO last year to examine the U.N. agency’s response to COVID-19 after bowing to a request from member countries.
“The situation we find ourselves in today could have been prevented,” Johnson Sirleaf said.
Beyond the call to boost WHO’s ability to investigate outbreaks, the panel made an array of recommendations, such as urging the health agency and the World Trade Organization to convene a meeting of vaccine-producing countries and manufacturers to quickly reach deals about voluntary licensing and technology transfer, in an effort to boost the world’s global supply of coronavirus shots.
The panel also suggested that WHO’s director-general — currently Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia — should be limited to a single seven-year term. As it stands, the WHO chief is elected to a five-year term that can be renewed once.
The suggestion to limit the tenure of WHO’s top leader appeared in part designed to ease the intense political pressure that WHO director-generals can face. Last year, the Trump administration repeatedly inveighed against the agency’s handling of the pandemic — taking aim at WHO’s alleged collusion with China.
An Associated Press investigation in June found WHO repeatedly lauded China in public while officials privately complained that Chinese officials stalled on sharing critical epidemic information with them, including the new virus’ genetic sequence.
Clark said the global diseases surveillance system needed to be overhauled — with WHO’s role strengthened.
“WHO should have the powers necessary to investigate outbreaks of concern, speedily guaranteed rights of access, and with the ability to publish information without waiting for member state approval,” she said.
Sophie Harman, a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London, said the panel’s recommendations were unlikely to be entirely welcomed by WHO’s member countries, and thus, unlikely to be implemented.
“Which states would actually allow WHO in to investigate an outbreak without their permission?” she asked.
Many doctors fatigued after treating COVID-19 patients said any reform of WHO should include an evaluation of its ability to properly assess the science of an emerging health threat.
David Tomlinson, a British physician who has been campaigning for health workers during the pandemic in the U.K., said WHO “failed on the most fundamental aspect” in its scientific leadership of COVID-19. He said WHO’s failure to acknowledge that much coronavirus transmission happens in the air has “amplified the pandemic.”
WHO has said coronavirus spread can happen in limited circumstances in the air but recommended against mask-wearing for the general public until last June.
Clare Wenham, a professor of global health policy at the London School of Economics, said the report overall was good, but questioned its support for the U.N.-backed program for coronavirus vaccines called COVAX, which relies on a “donation” model. Of the millions of COVID-19 vaccines administered to date, developing countries have received just 7%, WHO said this week.
“(COVAX) is not addressing one of the main problems, which is we need to rapidly ramp up production of the vaccines and distribution of vaccines,” she said. “And it’s still working on the model of a finite number that’s only able be produced by a certain few manufacturing locations.”
Overall, she suggested politicians needed to budge more than technical institutions like WHO.
“The problems aren’t technical. The problems are political. The problems are about like: How do you get governments to behave and think about things beyond their own borders?” Wenham said. “I don’t think that has been resolved.”
Keep up efforts to procure Covid vaccines: Standing committee on Foreign Ministry
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs has suggested the ministry keep up intensified efforts to get Oxford-AstraZeneca and China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines from India, China and the United States.
The 20th meeting of the committee was held at Sangsad Bhaban on Sunday with its Chairman Faruk Khan in the chair. Committee members including Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen, Nurul Islam Nahid and M Abdul Majid were present.
It reviewed the current situation about procurement of vaccines, celebrations of 50 years of Bangladesh's Independence and other issues, said a media release.
Dr Momen on Saturday said there is nothing to be worried about the availability of vaccines, noting that the government will have enough vaccines soon from alternative sources.
Also read: Nothing to be worried about vaccines: FM
“I believe we'll have enough vaccines. No person should be worried about it. Vaccines will come timely and all will get it,” he said in a video message shared on his verified Facebook page.
The Foreign Minister said Bangladesh is much ahead of many countries in the world in procuring vaccines and launching vaccination drives across the country.
He said many European countries decided about which vaccine they should use just in April whereas in Bangladesh many people got vaccinated.
Apart from China and Russia, Dr Momen said, there is much possibility to get vaccines from the US.
Also read: Deal with Russia soon over Covid vaccine: Health Minister
The Foreign Minister has recently written a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken seeking vaccine doses for immediate and long-term needs.
The government has sought immediate release of 2-4 million doses of vaccine from the US and a total of 10 to 20 million doses of vaccine for the long-term supply.
The US will share up to 60 million doses of its Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine with other countries as they become available.
The Foreign Minister said 5,00,000 doses of Chinese vaccine will arrive on May 12 as gift from the Chinese government.
Also read: Bangladesh seeks immediate delivery of 4 mn vaccine doses from US: FM
The World Health Organization (WHO) has listed the Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use, giving the green light for this vaccine to be rolled out globally.
The Sinopharm vaccine is produced by Beijing Bio-Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd, subsidiary of China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
Dr Momen said Russia's Sputnik V vaccine showed over 97 percent efficacy while the Chinese vaccines were taken by 100 million people without any side effects.
Bangladesh has received 7 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) through its contract. Bangladesh also received 3.3 million doses of vaccine as a bilateral partnership gift. This is the largest amount sent from India to any country.
Vexed over vaccines
The Directorate General of Health Services announced this week that Bangladesh’s stock of Covid-19 vaccines was running out, with only some 1.4 million jabs remaining in government hands. Given the current crisis in India, there is little to no hope of receiving the next consignment in accordance with the contract signed between Beximco Pharmaceuticals and the Serum Institute of India anytime soon.
Speaking at a virtual press briefing, DGHS spokesperson Robed Amin said, “We had around 10.02 million vaccine doses in our hands…around 8.8 have already been administered as the first and second doses. Now we have some 1.4 million doses in stock.”
He went on to warn that there would be a vaccine crisis if a fresh consignment does not arrive in the country before the existing stock is exhausted. Robed said around 5.8 million people have so far received the first dose of the vaccine while 3 million of them have got the second, booster dose to complete their course of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine. That leaves 2.8 million people yet to complete the course, of which 1.4 million can be covered from the current stock, since the government has stopped registering any new recipients through the Shurokkha app.
Clearly, the priority has shifted to covering these people rather than reaching a situation where a large number of them are left in limbo, considering the uncertainty over when Serum may resume supplies. As reported before, the government is now looking at alternative suppliers, something they would possibly have been well-advised to do earlier, from Russia and China, as well as others. But in the absence of any clear data yet on whether the vaccines can be mixed or matched, concentrating the remaining doses on letting as many people as possible complete their course is only the right thing to do.
Till Eid, which is about when supplies are estimated to lost, you’re unlikely to see any new faces popping up on your social media feed with their ‘vaccine selfie’. Unless they skipped it the first time, which is unlikely.
From pillar to post
Reaffirming that the government is making all-out efforts to collect Covid-19 vaccines from different sources, Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Thursday (May 6) said they are now “at the stage” of signing a deal with Russia to procure the Sputnik V vaccine.
Speaking at a virtual discussion arranged by Bangladesh Private Medical College Association, he said they are also trying to procure the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine from other countries besides India – AstraZeneca has licensed production in some 15 countries already.
Also read: Russian Vaccine Sputnik V: Things we should know to fight COVID-19
“We’ve been using the AstraZeneca vaccine as we had placed an order for 3 crore (30 million) doses of it. We’ve got only 70 lakh (7 million) jabs in addition to 30 lakh (3 million) that came as a gift…but now we don’t have that much vaccine in our stock and whatever is left will be given as the second dose,” the minister said.
He said the prime minister, Health Ministry, Foreign Ministry and other relevant ministries are making joint efforts to procure vaccines from other sources.
“We’ve already made a huge progress in discussions with Russia over procuring its vaccine … now we’re at the stage of signing a deal in this regard,” Maleque said.
He said they are also in talks with China to have Sinopharm’s Covid vaccine. “They informed us that five lakh (500,000) doses will arrive in Bangladesh by May 12. We’ve also sent a letter to them seeking more vaccine doses.”
The minister said the Chinese government is now assessing the possibility of vaccine export to Bangladesh. It must be observed that it sounds like an uncharacteristically conservative offer from Beijing, for which the episode back in August 2020 comes to mind, when it all seemed very close to an agreement with the Chinese for vaccine supply, before the government seemed to get cold feet.
Getting back to Maleque, he was desperate to explain the government’s all-out efforts to get the vaccine. “Even, we’re trying to have AstraZeneca’s vaccine from other countries as it’s being manufactured in different countries. So, every effort is there to bring vaccines. We hope our efforts will yield good results, and we may be able to give you good news over the vaccine very soon,” he said.
The minister also said they will encourage the private sector if it tries to manufacture vaccines in Bangladesh. “If anyone can produce vaccines, we’ll provide all-out support, and it’s my commitment.”
Speaking at the same programme, State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Dr Enamur Rahman said there is no alternative to vaccinating people to control the coronavirus. He too tried to assure everyone the government is working sincerely on procuring vaccines from Russia, China and other sources as there has been a crisis of AstraZeneca’s jabs in India.
Also read: What does it feel like to get COVID-19 after taking the vaccine?
He gave some hint as to what the government is looking at as a way to get past the pandemic, saying that all the pandemics that emerged in the world earlier had been brought under control through vaccination, although that’s not entirely true. “We hope we’ll be able to control the corona pandemic by vaccinating 60-80 percent of our people.”
What sort of timeframe they’re looking at to achieve that is up in the air, but it could be a good 2 years. Cases have been coming down in Bangladesh recently, but you never know when there can be another wave. The lesson we must heed going forward, is that never to close out any options during this crisis. And not to rest on our haunches. In that, the public has a role too, most evidently in maintaining the public health guidelines we’re now getting used to.
A shot at salvation?
It is of course well-documented by now that the pandemic has exposed some dangerous inequities between the rich world and the rest. The kind of problem the Bangladeshi authorities are dealing with today is scarcely seen in the West. While one in four citizens of rich nations have had a vaccine, just one in 500 people in poorer countries have done so, meaning the death toll continues to climb as the virus remains out of control. According to Oxfam, an international NGO, epidemiologists are predicting we have less than a year before mutations could render the current vaccines ineffective.
One of the reasons Pharma companies have been able to generate such large profits is because of intellectual property Last week, 175 former heads of state and Nobel Prize winners, including Gordon Brown, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Francoise Hollande wrote to President Biden to support the temporary waiving of intellectual property rights that restrict production to a handful of companies (those that develop the vaccine and others who obtain the license from them), to enable the rapid scale up of vaccine production across the world. They join the 1.5 million people in the US and other nations who have signalled their support for a People’s Vaccine.
Over 100 low- and middle-income nations, led by India and South Africa, are calling at the World Trade Organisation for a waiver of intellectual property protections on COVID-19 products during the pandemic, a move that had so far been opposed by the US, EU and other rich nations.
In a major shift, the Biden administration in the US this week joined the calls for more sharing of the technology behind COVID-19 vaccines to help speed the end of the pandemic, a shift that puts the US alongside many in the developing world who want rich countries to do more to get doses to the needy.
Also read: Can you mix-and-match COVID-19 vaccines?
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the government’s position, amid World Trade Organisation talks about a possible temporary waiver of its protections that would allow more manufacturers to produce the life-saving vaccines.
“The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines,” Tai said in a statement.
She cautioned that it would take time to reach the required global “consensus” to waive the protections under WTO rules, and US officials said it would not have an immediate effect on the global supply of COVID-19 shots.
In a tweet, the director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, John N. Nkengasong, said the Africa CDC welcomed the waiver and called the decision “leadership in action.” He added: “History will remember this decision as a great act of humanity!”
Tai’s announcement came hours after WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke to a closed-door meeting of ambassadors from developing and developed countries that have been wrangling over the issue, but agree on the need for wider access to COVID-19 treatments.
The WTO’s General Council took up the issue of a temporary waiver for intellectual property protections on COVID-19 vaccines and other tools, which South Africa and India first proposed in October. The idea has gained support among some progressive lawmakers in the West.
More than 100 countries have come out in support of the proposal, and a group of 110 members of Congress — all fellow Democrats of Biden — sent him a letter last month that called on him to support the waiver.
Opponents — especially from industry — say a waiver would be no panacea. They insist that production of coronavirus vaccines is complex and can’t be ramped up by easing intellectual property. They also say lifting protections could hurt future innovation.
Stephen Ubl, president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the US decision “will sow confusion between public and private partners, further weaken already strained supply chains and foster the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines.”
Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, chief executive of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization trade group, said in a statement that the decision will undermine incentives to develop vaccines and treatments for future pandemics.
“Handing needy countries a recipe book without the ingredients, safeguards, and sizable workforce needed will not help people waiting for the vaccine,” she said.
Also read: More support easing vaccine patent rules, but hurdles remain
Pfizer declined to comment on Biden’s announcement, as did Johnson & Johnson, which developed a one-dose vaccine meant to ease vaccination campaigns in poor and rural areas. Moderna and AstraZeneca didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The companies have made some efforts to provide vaccine doses to poor countries at prices well below what they’re charging wealthy nations.
For instance, Johnson & Johnson agreed last week to provide up to 220 million doses of its vaccine to the African Union’s 55 member states, starting in this year’s third quarter, and agreed in December to provide up to 500 million vaccines through 2022 for low-income countries via Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance.
Shares of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson — huge companies with many lucrative products — fell less than 1% on the news. But Moderna, whose vaccine is the company’s only product, fell 6.2% in late-afternoon trading before gaining back two-thirds of a percent in after-hours trading.
It remained unclear how some countries in Europe, which have influential pharmaceutical industries and had previously shared U.S. reservations about the waiver, would respond.
WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said a panel on intellectual property at the trade body was expected to take up the waiver proposal again at a “tentative” meeting later this month, before a formal meeting June 8-9. That means any final deal could be weeks away at best.
Authors of the proposal have been revising it in hopes of making it more palatable.
Okonjo-Iweala, in remarks posted on the WTO website, said it was “incumbent on us to move quickly to put the revised text on the table, but also to begin and undertake text-based negotiations.”
“I am firmly convinced that once we can sit down with an actual text in front of us, we shall find a pragmatic way forward” that is “acceptable to all sides,” she said.
Co-sponsors of the idea were shuttling between different diplomatic missions to make their case, according to a Geneva trade official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. A deadlock persists, and opposing sides remain far apart, the official said.
The argument, part of a long-running debate about intellectual property protections, centres on lifting patents, copyrights and protections for industrial design and confidential information to help expand the production and deployment of vaccines during supply shortages. The aim is to suspend the rules for several years, just long enough to beat down the pandemic.
The issue has become more pressing with a surge in cases in India, the world’s second-most populous country and a key producer of vaccines — including one for COVID-19 that relies on technology from Oxford University and British-Swedish pharmaceutical maker AstraZeneca.
Michael Yee, a Jefferies Group biotech analyst, wrote to investors that the key access issues for developing countries aren’t patents or price, but an inadequate supply of the materials needed and the know-how to produce the vaccines and keep quality high — which one of Johnson & Johnson’s contract manufacturers in the U.S. failed to do, ruining millions of doses.
“Manufacturing supplies, raw materials, vials, stoppers, and other key materials are in limited supply for 2021,” and may still be next year and beyond, Yee wrote. That’s partly because it takes time to make all those components, and Moderna and Pfizer have commitments to buy them “from major suppliers in huge bulk over the foreseeable future.”
He added that Pfizer previously sought authorization to sell its vaccine to India, which rejected its application and asked that additional studies be run. The U.S., European Union and many other countries have given that emergency authorization.
Proponents, including WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, note that such waivers are part of the WTO toolbox and insist there’s no better time to use them than during the once-in-a-century pandemic that has taken 3.2 million lives, infected more than 437 million people and devastated economies, according to Johns Hopkins University.
“This is a monumental moment in the fight against COVID-19,” Tedros said in Wednesday statement. He said the U.S. commitment “to support the waiver of IP protections on vaccines is a powerful example of American leadership to address global health challenges.”
Additional reporting by Masudul Hoque and AP.
Nothing to be worried about vaccines: FM
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Saturday said there is nothing to be worried about the availability of vaccines, noting that the government will have enough vaccines soon from alternative sources.
“I believe we'll have enough vaccines. No one should be worried about it. Vaccines will come timely and all will get it,” he said in a video message shared on his verified Facebook page.
The Foreign Minister said Bangladesh is much ahead of many countries in the world in procuring vaccines and launching vaccination drives across the country.
He said many European countries decided about which vaccine they should use just in April whereas in Bangladesh many people got vaccinated.
Apart from China and Russia, Dr Momen said, there is much possibility to get vaccines from the United States.
Also read: Bangladesh seeks immediate delivery of 4 mn vaccine doses from US: FM
The Foreign Minister has recently written a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken seeking vaccine doses from the US for immediate and long-term needs.
The government has sought immediate release of 2-4 million doses of vaccine from the United States (US) and a total of 10 to 20 million doses of vaccine for the long term supply.
The US will share up to 60 million doses of its Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines vaccine with other countries as they become available.
The Foreign Minister said 5 lakh doses of Chinese vaccine will arrive here on May 12 as a gift from the Chinese government
The World Health Organization (WHO) has listed the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, giving the green light for this vaccine to be rolled out globally.
Also read: Deal with Russia soon over Covid vaccine: Health Minister
The Sinopharm vaccine is produced by Beijing Bio-Institute of Biological Products Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China National Biotec Group (CNBG).
“The addition of this vaccine (Sinopharm COVID-19) has the potential to rapidly accelerate Covid-19 vaccine access for countries seeking to protect health workers and populations at risk. We urge the manufacturer to participate in the COVAX Facility and contribute to the goal of more equitable vaccine distribution," says Dr Mariângela Simão, WHO Assistant-Director General for Access to Health Products.
Dr Momen said Russia's Sputnik V Covid vaccine showed over 97 percent efficacy while the Chinese vaccines were taken by 100 million people without any side effects.
He said the government of Bangladesh got the vaccines from India at a very low cost but they could not supply as per agreement due to the deteriorating situation in India with sharp rise of demands for vaccines there.
Earlier, the Foreign Minister said the government is not shifting its attention from India as there is an agreement with Serum Institute of India to get 3 crore doses of vaccine.
Also read: What does it feel like to get COVID-19 after taking the vaccine?
He said India is yet to reply as Bangladesh sought at least 30 lakh doses of vaccine under the agreement to address the immediate demand in Bangladesh. “We’ll procure vaccines wherever we get it.”
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reaffirmed that the government will procure vaccines at any cost to protect people from coronavirus."We are bringing more vaccines, no matter how much money is required; we will bring more vaccines."
Bangladesh has received 7 million of Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine doses produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) vaccines through its contract. Bangladesh also received 3.3 million doses of vaccine as a bilateral partnership gift. This is the largest amount sent from India to any country.
Covid-19: Bangladesh sees 45 more deaths with 1285 new cases
Bangladesh reported 45 more Coronavirus related deaths with 1285 new cases in 24 hours until Saturday morning amid concern after the detection of first case of highly contagious Indian Coronavirus strain in the country.
The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said the new fatalities pushed up the country’s death toll to 11,878 while the mortality rate remained static at 1.54 percent.
Besides, the DGHS said, 1,285 new cases were detected during the period after the test of 14,703 samples, taking the total case count to 772,127.
Also, the country's infection rate fell to 8.74%, which was 9.89% a day ago, according to the DGHS.
The number of Covid deaths came down to as low as 50 after over a month on Wednesday as Bangladesh saw 50 deaths earlier on April 1 and it had kept rising since then.
The body count soared to over 100 during April 16-19 and on April 25 but the daily fatalities have been falling gradually since then.
Also read: Bangladesh detects 1st case of Indian Coronavirus strain
According to the DGHS, 2,492 infected people recovered in the past 24 hours, putting the recovery rate at 91.54%.
Bangladesh has so far carried out 5,613 ,979 nationwide tests since reporting its first coronavirus cases on March 8 last year and the first death on the 18th of that month.
Dhaka, worst hit region as death toll nears 7,000
Dhaka remained the worst hit region by the virus, recording 6,900 fatalities or 58.09% of the total deaths until now.
Twenty-one of the 45 virus related deaths recorded today are from Dhaka and 13 are from Chattogram.
Indian Coronavirus strain detected
A confirmed case of Indian Coronavirus strain has been detected in Bangladesh on Saturday, confirmed Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research(IEDCR).
The Indian strain of Coronavirus was detected in a sample test at Evercare Hospital in Dhaka and it has been published on Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), said chief scientific officer of IEDCR ASM Alamgir.
The new strain was detected in samples collected from recent India returnee passengers in Bangladesh.
India recorded over 4 lakh new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours ending 8 am Saturday, taking the country’s total caseload to over 2.18 crore. With 4,187 new deaths, the toll now stands at over 2.38 lakh.
Into the third week of extended lockdown
The government has issued a notification extending the ongoing lockdown until May 16 with six fresh directives alongside the existing ones to contain the spread of Covid-19.
According to the notification issued by the Cabinet Division, the officials of all government, semi-government autonomous and private organisations, banks and financial institutions have been asked to remain at their respective workstations during the upcoming Eid-ul-Fitr holidays.
Shops and shopping malls will remain open from 10am to 8pm maintaining health guidelines. If any kind of deviation and violation are seen, the shopping malls and shops will be closed instantly, says the notification.
Inter-district transport services will remain closed while only intra-district transport services were allowed to operate ensuring health guidelines from Thursday. However, launch and train services will remain off.
Also read: New Covid-19 strain found in 10 EU returnees: Maleque
Amid a mad rush of home-bound people ahead of Eid-ul-Fitr, ferry services on Paturia-Daulatdia and Shimulia-Banglabazar routes have been suspended today to curb the spread of Covid-19.
However, vessels carrying patients and goods will be allowed to cross the rivers, said BIWTC public relations officer Nazrul Islam.
Vaccination drive
Bangladesh launched its vaccination drive on February 7 with Oxford-AstraZeneca doses purchased from India's Serum Institute.
Bangladesh signed an agreement with Serum for 30 million doses. But a record number of cases in India has made the delivery of the doses uncertain.
The administering of the first dose has remained suspended in Bangladesh since April 26. Also, the country, the prime recipient of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines, has suspended the registration for Covid-19 jabs due to vaccine shortage amid a delay in the timely arrival of shipments from India.
However, DGHS DG Prof ABM Khurshid Alam assured that Bangladesh would get 2.1 million doses of vaccines by early May.
Dwindling vaccine stock
The DGHS on Wednesday said the stock of the Covid-19 vaccine is dwindling in Bangladesh as there are only 14 lakh jabs left with no sign in sight to get a fresh consignment of it from India.
DGHS spokesperson Dr Robed Amin said, "We had around 1 crore and 2 lakh doses. Around 88 lakh jabs have already been administered as the first and second doses. Now we've some 14 lakh doses in stock."
He said there will be a vaccine crisis if a fresh consignment does not arrive in the country before the existing stock is exhausted.
Vaccine expected from US
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Wednesday said the government has intensified its efforts to have vaccine jabs from the USA as it will share up to 60 million doses of its Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine with other countries.
Vaccine production
With India slapping a ban on the export of AstraZeneca vaccines made by its Serum Institute, Bangladesh is trying to get technology from Russia and China to produce their vaccines locally.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on April 28 approved in principle a proposal for producing Russian and Chinese Covid-19 vaccines in Bangladesh.
The government on April 29 approved the emergency use of Sinopharm, a Chinese Covid-19 vaccine, a day after approving the emergency use of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine.
"We'll get 5 lakh doses of the Chinese vaccine as a gift within 7-10 days. Then the government will start buying those on a G2G basis," Mahbubur Rahman, director general of the Directorate General of Drug Administration told reporters.
Can you mix-and-match COVID-19 vaccines?
The Directorate General of Health Services announced on Wednesday that Bangladesh’s stock of Covid-19 vaccines is running out, with only some 1.4 million jabs remaining in government hands. Given the current crisis in India, there is little to no hope of receiving the next consignment in accordance with the contract signed between Beximco Pharmaceuticals and the Serum Institute of India anytime soon.
Speaking at a virtual press briefing, DGHS spokesperson Robed Amin said, “We had around 10.2 million vaccine doses in our hands…around 8.8 have already been administered as the first and second doses. Now we have some 1.4 million doses in stock.”
He went on to warn that there would be a vaccine crisis if a fresh consignment does not arrive in the country before the existing stock is exhausted. Robed said around 5.8 million people have so far received the first dose of the vaccine while 3 million of them have got the second, booster dose to complete their course of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine.
That leaves 2.8 million people yet to complete the course, of which 1.4 million can be covered from the current stock. In the absence of any clear data yet on whether the vaccines can be mixed or matched, concentrating the remaining doses on letting as many people as possible complete their course is probably the right thing to do.
But that still leaves 1.4 million people that current stocks cannot cover. In case a new stock of the same vaccine cannot be procured in time, is it advisable to mix vaccine doses?
The prospect of mixing vaccine doses offers a chance to bolster vaccine rollouts and, potentially boost the immunity provided, but evidence around the wisdom of this approach is scarce when it comes to Covid-19. However it is “nothing new” to medical science, according to Dr Pierre Meulien, executive director of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), an EU and European pharmaceutical industry partnership.
“We have decades of experience in pre-clinical and clinical (work), especially in HIV, using these approaches,” Dr Meulien told EU Horizons.
Also read: Covid vaccine stock running out: DGHS
Indeed, the measure has already been introduced by France and Germany for people who received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine but are in age groups for which that vaccine is no longer recommended in those countries due to rare instances of blood clotting.
On 1 April, Germany advised that those under 55 receive an mRNA vaccine alternative, such as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, as a follow-up shot. Soon after, France recommended the same for people under the age of 60.
All of the Covid-19 vaccines widely available, with the exception of Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) one-and-done jab, require two doses. The first dose primes the immune system and the second dose (usually administered a few weeks after the first) boosts it.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned against the mixing of vaccines unless there are “exceptional situations”, such as a shortage of the first-dose vaccine because of production or distribution problems.
In the UK, Public Health England has taken a similar stance. After the government delayed second vaccine doses for up to 12 weeks so that more people could get their first jab and at least some protection, health officials acknowledged that, in exceptional circumstances, mismatched doses may be given to those who come in for their second booster only to find that the vaccine they originally had is not available.
Some experts are wondering whether flexibility in allowing mixed-dose vaccination might help people get fully vaccinated faster. Others have argued that mixing two different vaccines could actually do a better job of protecting against Covid-19 than sticking to the same one for all doses.
Covid-19 vaccines prime the body’s immune system to target the coronavirus spike protein but target different parts of the spike.
Also read: Bangladesh approves emergency use of Chinese Covid vaccine
AstraZeneca’s adenovirus vaccine uses a weakened version of a common cold virus found in chimpanzees (ChAdOx1) to present the spike protein to the immune system, while Pfizer’s mRNA-based vaccine delivers genetic instructions for making the spike protein and encourages human cells to produce it, triggering an immune response.
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) vaccine researcher Dr Kylie Quinn has described Covid-19 vaccines as vehicles delivering cargo – the vehicles may be different, and they may drop off their payloads by different means, but the spike protein cargo is the same. Because the cargo is identical, the vaccines should, in theory, work well together.
It does make some simple sense that sparking more than one arm of the immune system could boost immunity on the whole, according to an article published on the website of Clinical Trials Arena, a publication focused on the pharmaceutical industry globally.
Mount Sinai Hospital epidemiologist and assistant professor of medicine Dr Dana Mazo explained to US-based website HealthLine that, in some cases, one type of vaccine can indeed enhance the effectiveness of another.
“There are two different types of pneumococcal vaccines that have different mechanisms of action, and in certain situations we recommend boosting one with the other,” she said.
Also read: Bangladesh approves local production of Russian, Chinese Covid vaccines
The Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine produced by Russia’s Gamaleya Research Institute already uses the theory over its two-dose course. Unlike the other vaccines, its first and second doses actually differ, by harnessing two kinds of adenoviruses in its prime and booster doses to deliver genetic instructions to the immune system. The first jab uses a harmless common cold virus (Ad26) and the second, given 21 days later, uses another safe but scientifically engineered cold virus (Ad5).
Using an alternative vehicle to deliver the cargo allows the vaccines “genetic payload” to skirt any inadvertent immune response to the first shot. The kind of immune response they're trying to avoid here is not dangerous, but rather one that "could dampen the vaccine’s effect", according to Pia Dosenovic, an immunologist at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, which awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.
The method paid off, and Sputnik V has been found to be one of the most effective vaccines at 91.6% and has been rolled out in Russia and 56 other countries. Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Thursday (May 6) said they are now “at the stage” of signing a deal with Russia to procure the Sputnik V vaccine.
The most important unanswered question is whether mixing vaccines from different manufacturers will cause unwanted adverse reactions.
Testing the mix-and-match theory
Currently, in the UK, an eight-arm study assessing the mix-and-match theory is underway, according to the BBC. The ambitious University of Oxford-run trial called Com-COV2 is testing various combinations of the vaccines currently approved in Britain – Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna, as well as Novavax’s candidate, which is expected to be approved in the coming weeks.
The trial will enroll 1,050 adult subjects aged 50 years or older who received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine in the past eight to 12 weeks.
Recipients will have received either the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccine and will be randomly allocated to receive either the same vaccine for their second dose or a dose of Novavax or Moderna’s jabs. If more vaccines are approved over the coming months, they may also be added to the trial.
While announcing Com-COV, University of Oxford associate professor in paediatrics and vaccinology and chief investigator on the trial, Dr Matthew Snape, cited experiments in mice in which combinations of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines boosted immunity better than two doses of either one alone. Now this cocktail and others are being tested in humans.
“If we can show that these mixed schedules generate an immune response that is as good as the standard schedules, and without a significant increase in the vaccine reactions, this will potentially allow more people to complete their Covid-19 immunisation course more rapidly,” Snape told the BBC.
“What I’m hoping is that we won’t rule out any combinations. That’s how we need to look at it: are there any combinations we shouldn’t be giving, because they don’t generate a good immune response? And I’m hoping that won’t be the case,” he added.
Results of the trial are expected in June.
Gamaleya and AstraZeneca have registered a pair of clinical trials in which volunteers will receive a dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine and another of Sputnik V. One trial in Azerbaijan is underway, and a second in Russia is still under review by the country’s ministry of health.
Meanwhile, Norway is awaiting the results of a clinical trial assessing the effectiveness of mixing vaccines before making a decision. Government researchers in Spain said they will study the effects of mixing Covid-19 vaccines in response to the shifting guidelines on the safety of the AZ shot.
For now, it’s too soon to tell whether mixing and matching vaccines is effective, more effective or safe. The world is watching these trials closely to see the outcomes. Mixing the platforms would not seem to contain any obvious, inherent risk, but the main concern is it is not very well tested yet.
New Covid strains won’t impact efficiency of Russian vaccines, expert claims
The potential of new coronavirus strains appearing won’t diminish the efficiency of Russian-made COVID vaccines, assures Viktor Zuyev, chief researcher at the Gamaleia Research Institute.
"As of today, when asked whether the emergence of mutations would invalidate the vaccines’ efficiency, we can answer that there is no such danger," he emphasized.
Also read: More support easing vaccine patent rules, but hurdles remain
Earlier, Anna Popova, the nation’s chief sanitary doctor, stated that Russian vaccines guarantee protection from all coronavirus strains.
Also read: US support behind vaccine patent waiver ‘monumental moment’ in Covid fight: WHO