Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Tuesday said that Bangladesh has opened talks with China over procuring 50 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
“We have sent them a letter of interest. They have accepted it. Now we will sign the note of non-disclosure and then the agreement will be signed,” the minister said while talking to the newsmen after a programme at the state guest house Padma in Dhaka.
The minister said Bangladesh wants the supply of vaccines in phases from July.
“We have asked for 40-50 million vaccines, and we can even buy more depending on their supply,” Mr Maleque said.
“They have a huge production capacity and they can do it. We are also interested in co-production of the vaccine here as some of our companies have the facility to produce vaccine locally,” the minister said adding that co-production will take time.
Responding to a question about why the government delayed in seeking the Chinese vaccine, the minister said that Bangladesh had agreed to conduct third phase trial of the vaccine but it did not happen as China wanted Bangladesh to fund the trial partially.
“We told them that there is no instance in the world that the host country bears the expenses of the trial, and then they declined to conduct the trial here,” he added.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen, who accompanied the health minister, said that Bangladesh could not buy the Chinese jabs earlier as the country's vaccine had yet to receive approval from WHO.
“They received the approval (for one of their vaccines) just a few days ago,” he said adding that the experts were against using non-approved vaccines considering the interest of the people.
“But they have been telling us that heads of the governments of many countries were given their vaccines and it did not cause any side effect for them,” Dr Momen said.
The health minister said that Bangladesh is also continuing its effort to collect vaccines from Russia and AstraZeneca.
“The second dose can be given three months after the first one, so we have the time. And we are also in regular contact with AstraZeneca and India to get the vaccines,” he added.
Earlier, both the ministers handed over medicines and health protection items to the Nepalese Ambassador to Dhaka Dr Banshidhor Mishra for the Covid-affected people of Nepal against the backdrop of the deteriorating pandemic situation there.
Bangladesh is sending a substantive volume of these items which will be transported to Nepal by the Nepalese embassy soon.
Senior Secretary of the Foreign Ministry Masud Bin Momen and Health Services Division Secretary Lokman Hossain Miah were present during the handover.