Bangladesh is set to receive an additional 1.2 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZenca vaccine as a gift from India on Friday.
The vaccine shipment will arrive in Dhaka on a flight around 8 am Friday, Dr Mohammad Robed Amin, the line director at the Non-Communicable Disease Control, said citing information from the foreign ministry.
The same day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to arrive in Dhaka to join the twin celebrations of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s birth centenary and the golden jubilee of Bangladesh’s independence, reports bdnews24com.
“The shipment has nothing to do with the imported vaccine doses we brought from India,” Amin said.
In January, India presented Bangladesh with two million doses produced by the Serum Institute of India as a goodwill gesture. Separately, Bangladesh signed a deal to import 30 million Oxford-AstraZenca vaccine doses from Serum Institute.
Bangladesh launched a nationwide mass vaccination drive on Feb 7 after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the programme in a small testing phase at the end of January.
