Bangladesh has received the first batch of 1.25 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by US firm Moderna.
The US is sending total 2.5 million doses of the vaccine under the international vaccine supply platform COVAX, reports bdnews24.com.
The first consignment of the shot arrived at Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka by an Emirates Airlines flight around 11:15 pm on Friday, said Maidul Islam, a spokesman for the health ministry.
Health Minister Zahid Maleque, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen and senior officials went to the airport to receive the doses.
Maleque said the rest of the Moderna doses – 1.2 million – are expected to arrive on Saturday morning.
“Our mass vaccination drive stopped after the strong launch because we did not get expected doses. I hope we won’t face another supply crunch. We are getting vaccines from other countries and this will continue,” he said.
He hopes Bangladesh will get 100 million doses by December to inoculate 50 million people.
The Moderna vaccine, approved by Bangladesh on Jun 29, will be the fourth to be administered against the coronavirus in the country.
These 2.5 million vaccine doses are part of US government’s recent allocation of 25 million vaccine doses for countries in Asia, the US Embassy in Dhaka said.
Bangladesh started its mass vaccination campaign in February, using the COVISHIELD vaccine developed by the UK's University of Oxford and Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca. But the programme was subsequently halted after Indian froze vaccine exports to tackle its own crisis of doses.
The inoculation drive later resumed after the country received consignments of Sinopharm and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
The Moderna vaccine is the second for Bangladesh under COVAX, which is expected to give the country 68 million doses, with two shots per person, to cover 20 percent of the population. The Pfizer shots also came through the programme co-led by the World Health Organization.
With an efficacy rate of over 94 percent in trials, the Moderna vaccine uses the same mRNA technology as Pfizer's shot but can be stored at normal fridge temperatures once thawed from a frozen state. Pfizer vaccine must be stored and shipped at ultra-cool temperatures.
With limited cold chain facilities, Bangladesh is administering the Pfizer at a few centres in Dhaka.
The Moderna vaccine, developed in partnership with the US National Institutes of Health, is administered in two shots 28 days apart.
It has relatively minor side effects including pain around the injection site and swelling, but the US Food and Drug Administration recently added a warning about rare cases of heart inflammation in adolescents and young adults to fact sheets for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots.
