United News of Bangladesh

Health Minister Zahid Maleque said on Wednesday that 50 per cent of the vaccination target can be achieved by December this year as Covid-19 jabs are arriving in the country as planned. "We have already proven that it is possible to give 80 lakh doses of vaccine in a day if the health sector wants. So from now on, if three crore doses of vaccine arrive in the country every month as per the demand, we will be able to give them to the people," said the minister. The minister stated this at a meeting on healthcare and development issues of the country organised by UHFPO, an organisation of Upazila Health Officers, at Hotel Intercontinental in the capital. The minister said the country has also started inoculating school-going students between the ages of 12 and18 and gradually all the people of the country will be vaccinated. The minister said even though Bangladesh itself has not produced any vaccine yet, the country now has almost all types of vaccines produced in the world. Read: Japan to provide more vaccine doses through COVAX in Nov "From now on, at least three crore doses of vaccine will come to the country every month," Zahid said. He also mentioned that the shipment of Chinese Sinopharm vaccines continues as per the agreement. More vaccines have begun to arrive as per the agreement through the World Health Organization. Serum Institute of India has also started the export of Covishield vaccine. Other vaccines including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca under the COVAX facility have started to arrive in the country. Referring to the opposition's criticism of the country's health sector, the health minister said that his ministry successfully dealt with dengue along with combating Covid-19. This has been appreciated internationally. Besides, Bangladesh has ranked 26th in the world in tackling Covid pandemic in a recent survey conducted by Nippon in Japan, including Bloomberg and the World Health Organization, he said. Prof ABM Khurshid Alam, Director General of Department of Health, Ebadul Karim MP, Managing Director of Beacon Pharmaceuticals, and Lokman Hossain Mia, Senior Secretary of Department of Health Services, were present among others at the meeting.

The government has lowered the minimum age limit for taking Covid-19 jabs to 25 from 30 years in a bid to give a boost to the lagging vaccination rates in the country. From now on, people aged 25 and above are eligible to register for taking vaccines through Surrokha app, said sources at the health directorate on Thursday. The official app, launched by the ICT Division of Bangladesh for providing the facility to register for vaccination, also came up with the information. Also read: All will get Covid vaccine shots, reassures PM Hasina Earlier on July 19, the government lowered the age limit from 35 to 30 for vaccine registration.

Amid the deteriorating coronavirus situation, the government is going to resume the countrywide mass registration for receiving Covid-19 jabs from Thursday (July 8), said the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Tuesday. “The registration process will resume for all from Thursday morning,” Prof Dr Mizanur Rahman, Director (MIS) of the DGHS, told UNB.   “Currently, the registration is ongoing only in three categories on a priority basis. As the mass registration process resumes, all the categories will be available for registering through the Surokkha app as before,” he said.    Earlier, on June 30, Dr Shamsul Haque, member secretary of the Vaccine Deployment Committee, also made the same announcement at a virtual press briefing arranged by the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS). He said the Sinopharm jabs will be administered at 40 centers in Dhaka city and at all district hospitals from 8am to 3pm every day as in the past. Also read: Bangladesh’s Covid catastrophe worsens; 163 more lives lost Dr Haque said the vaccine will also be given at Bangladesh Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases (BITID) in Chattogram and Saidpur Sadar Hospital during the same period. He said those who got registered earlier but could not receive the vaccines will be given the Sinopharm jabs now while the medical and university students and those who are on the priority lists can get registered for the vaccine. “Everyone will get an SMS from a vaccination centre after the registration and all must receive the vaccine at that centre accordingly. “In this case, the vaccine card and NID card must be brought for receiving the vaccine.” Dr Haque said the Covid vaccination centers will remain out of the purview of the lockdown. “Those who have vaccine cards will be able to go to the relevant centre showing it.” He said the expatriate workers who stay in countries where the Sinopharm vaccine is accepted also can receive the vaccine at the centers both in Dhaka and outside. “But no one will get the vaccine without registration.” Also read: Chinese firms working with Bangladeshi partners for vaccine co-production Besides, Dr Haque said, the Pfizer vaccine will also be administered at seven centers--Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, Salimullah Medical College and Hospital, Mugda Medical College Hospital, Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Kurmitola General Hospital, and Sheikh Russel National Gastroliver Institute and Hospital—in the capital. He said the outbound expatriate workers who are not allowed to return to their workplaces without getting Pfizer vaccine can only receive the vaccine at the seven centers as per the list from the Manpower Export Promotion Bureau. Dr Haque said those who are supposed to receive Sinopharm jabs from these centres will have to go to alternative centres.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Wednesday informed the Parliament that 80 per cent of the country’s people will get Covid-19 jabs by March next year. “We’ll be able to vaccinate 80 per cent of people within the first quarter of the next year,” he said, explaining how Bangladesh would collect the Covid-19 vaccines from several sources by this time. The minister was speaking on a cut motion on his ministry in Parliament as the opposition Jatiya Party, BNP and Ganoforum MPs harshly criticised the health ministry for its failure to ensure vaccines for mass people. He said some 25 lakh Covid-19 vaccines of Moderna will arrive within July 2 to July 3.   Vaccines purchased from China will also start coming by that time. Bangladesh has inked an agreement with Chinese Sinopharm to get 1.50 crore vaccine, said Zahid. Bangladesh will get 6.30 crore vaccines within December under the Covax facilities… the country will have a total stock of 10 crore vaccine doses by December through which it will be able to inoculate five crore people, he said. READ: University students to be vaccinated for reopening dorms: UGC Besides, Bangladesh will get 7 crore doses from Johnson & Johnson in the first quarter of the next year and it will be able to inoculate seven crore people with this, he added.  BNP MPs Harunur Rashid, Rumeen Farhana and Mosharrof Hossain, Jatiya Party MPs Mujibul Haque, Pir Fazlur Rahman, Rustum Ali Faraji, Shameem Haider Patwary, among others, joined the discussion on cut motion during the passage of the national budget for 2021-22 fiscal.   They also came down heavily on the minister for allegations of widespread corruption, irregularities and mismanagement in the health sector. The health minister, however, rejected these allegations and asked the lawmakers. “You’ll have to say specifically where corruption took place. The wholesale allegation of corruption in the health sector is not acceptabe,” he said.    Zahid said that none could go abroad to receive the medical treatment amid the Covid-19 restrictions and they are taking services in Bangladeshi hospitals.  “You are taking services since the hospital can render the services. You remain well,” he said. READ: South Korea mulls dropping masks for vaccinated The minister claimed that no corruption took place in procurement of masks. “The masks that MPs talked about were never purchased. No payment was made,” he said.

At Dracula’s castle in picturesque Transylvania, Romanian doctors are offering a jab in the arm rather than a stake through the heart. A COVID-19 vaccination center has been set up on the periphery of Romania’s Bran Castle, which is purported to be the inspiration behind Dracula’s home in Bram Stoker’s 19th-century gothic novel “Dracula.” Every weekend through May “vaccination marathons” will be held just outside the storied 14th-century hilltop castle, where no appointment is needed, in an attempt to encourage people to protect themselves against COVID-19. “We wanted to show people a different way to get the (vaccine) needle,” Alexandru Priscu, the marketing manager at Bran Castle, told The Associated Press. Those brave enough to get a Pfizer vaccine shot receive a “vaccination diploma,” which is aptly illustrated with a fanged medical worker brandishing a syringe. “Besides the diploma, people benefit with free entry to the (castle’s) torture rooms, which have 52 medieval torture instruments,” Priscu noted. Since the light-hearted campaign was launched over the weekend — when nearly 400 people were vaccinated — Priscu said he has received scores of requests from foreigners wishing to get vaccinated in the spooky setting. Bad news for them: only residents of Romania can officially receive a jab. The campaign runs alongside a series of government initiatives as it pushes to speed up the inoculation campaign for the European Union nation of more than 19 million people. The government is hoping to vaccinate 5 million people by June 1 to herald in a “return to normality.” On Saturday, all vaccination centers in the country became appointment-free after 2 p.m., and round-the-clock “vaccination marathon” events have been launched in several cities throughout Romania. Since the pandemic started, Romania has recorded more than 1 million COVID-19 infections and 29,034 people have died.

The World Health Organisation has said that low-income countries have just received only 0.2 percent of the total Covid-19 jabs globally as more than 700 million vaccine doses have been administered across the world. The vast majority of Covid-19 vaccines administered so far have gone to wealthy nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.  “There remains a shocking imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines," WHO chief Tedros Adhanonom Ghebreyesus told reporters at the agency’s regular briefing from Geneva.  “On average in high-income countries, almost one in four people has received a vaccine. In low-income countries, it’s one in more than 500.  Let me repeat that: one in four versus one in 500," the UN News quoted him as saying. Bilateral deals hurt COVAX The global solidarity initiative, COVAX, has also experienced a shortage of vaccines.  While the mechanism has distributed some 38 million doses so far, it was expected to deliver nearly 100 million by the end of March. Also read: 36 countries yet to get Covid jabs: WHO “The problem is not getting vaccines out of COVAX; the problem is getting them in," he said. “We understand that some countries and companies plan to do their own bilateral vaccine donations, bypassing COVAX for their own political or commercial reasons. These bilateral arrangements run the risk of fanning the flames of vaccine inequity.” Scaling up solidarity COVAX partners, who include Gavi, the vaccine alliance, are working on several options to scale up production to meet the goal of delivering two billion doses by the end of the year. Dr Seth Berkley, the Chief Executive Officer at Gavi, highlighted the need for continued solidarity. "What we are now beginning to see are supply constraints, not just of vaccines, but also of the goods that go into making vaccines.  COVAX is in discussions with several high-income countries to get them to share surplus vaccine doses, he said. It is also developing cost-sharing mechanisms so that low-income countries can buy additional doses through COVAX, funded by multilateral development banks. Also read: Share Covid jabs out of self-interest: WHO Dr Berkley said that financing is also needed as demand for vaccines has risen with the emergence of new Covid-19 variants. Concern over ‘raging inferno’ in Brazil WHO remains deeply concerned about what one of its experts labelled the “raging inferno of an outbreak” in Brazil, in response to a journalist’s question about scaling up vaccines to address the emergency there. South America’s largest country has recorded more than 340,000 deaths since the pandemic began, making it second only to the United States. Tedros said he has spoken with the newly appointed health minister, and officials at the federal level, which he hoped will “help with moving forward in our partnership". Continue prevention measures Dr Bruce Aylward, a WHO Senior Adviser, described the situation in Brazil as “very, very concerning”.  Delivering more vaccines would have minimal impact, he said, emphasing the need to continue measures that have proved to slow virus spread. “Even by the time you get vaccines into a country, by the time you get them into people -- and you’re getting them to a relatively small proportion of the population -- that will have a small effect in limiting the risk to some people," he said. “But what you’re dealing with here is a raging inferno of an outbreak, and that requires population-level action in the rapid identification, isolation, quarantining, because you have to approach this at that scale to slow this thing down.” Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO Technical Lead on Covid-19, said that while vaccines are a powerful tool, they alone will not end the pandemic.  “The trajectory of this pandemic around the world is going in the wrong direction," she said, referring to six consecutive weeks of increased cases and rising deaths. “We have tools right now that can prevent infections and can save lives, so we need to find reasons why measures aren’t in place... and find solutions to actually get these in place.”