The government will stop administering first doses of the coronavirus vaccine to citizens after 10 million first shots in a single-day drive on Feb 26.
Dr ABM Khurshid Alam, head of the Directorate General of Health Services, revealed the plan at a virtual press conference on Tuesday.
The director-general said the authorities will now strengthen second and third, or booster, shots in the mass inoculation programme that began in February 2021, reports bdnews24.com.
“We will be busy administering the second and booster shots now. So those who haven’t received the first dose – please take the vaccine at your nearest centres,” Khurshid said.
“We’ve seen that the mortality and hospitalisation rates [from COVID] are low among those who are vaccinated. In this circumstance, we urge all to take the vaccine to make yourselves and others safe.”
The government had to suspend the immunisation programme for some time due to a supply crisis amid a huge wave of infections driven by the delta variant of the coronavirus.
As new shipments of vaccines came in, the rate of vaccination increased. The death rate has remained lower in the ongoing omicron variant wave than the previous bouts of COVID-19 as the country rolled out the booster shots.
According to the directorate, nearly 101 million people received a first dose of the vaccine until Monday. Around 71.5 million of these citizens have also received the second dose and the government-administered the booster shots to nearly 2.7 million people.
Until Feb 9, Bangladesh received more than 276.7 million COVID-19 vaccine doses.