The first commercial shipment of 1.0 million Sinopharm coronavirus vaccines from China has reached Bangladesh.
A Biman Bangladesh Airlines jet carrying the vaccines touched down at Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka after Friday midnight, said Maidul Islam, a health ministry spokesman.
He said 1 million more Siopharm doses will arrive on Saturday morning, reports bdnews24.com.
Health Minister Zahid Maleque and Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen were present at the airport to receive the doses.
Earlier, China had sent 1.1 million doses of the vaccine to Bangladesh as a gesture of goodwill.
The latest shipment is part of the government’s agreement with China.
On May 25, Minister Momen had said as many as 15 million doses would be purchased from China.
Sinopharm’s vaccine is the second to arrive in Bangladesh purchased by the government after the one developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca.
Bangladesh received two shipments of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVISHIELD vaccine as part of an agreement for 30 million doses before India stopped exporting the vaccine produced by Serum Institute due to the country itself struggling with a grappling pandemic crisis.
This put Bangladesh’s vaccination drive in doubt as authorities halted giving out the first doses of the vaccine in April.
Bangladesh then began communicating with China and Russia for vaccines.
Bangladesh also received 1.3 million doses of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine on Friday night from the US under the global vaccine-sharing platform COVAX. The US will send 1.2 million more doses of the vaccine on Saturday morning.
Under COVAX, Bangladesh also received 100,620 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.