Bangladesh to receive 2.5 million doses of Moderna vaccine from Covax

Bangladesh is set to receive 2.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine under Covax facilities within the next 7-10 days.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque confirmed the matter to DBC, a national television channel, on Friday.

He said: “We have received a letter today [Friday] from Covax following an application that we submitted in June last year. They will provide us with 2.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine.

“The vaccine will be provided within 7 to 10 days.”

Moderna vaccine is an mRNA vaccine that has been developed by ModernaTX, Inc of USA, but is yet to get approval for emergency use in Bangladesh.

This is a two-dose vaccine and administered within 28 days. The unpunctured vials (varied from 11 to 15 doses) may be stored in the refrigerator between 2° and 8°C for up to 30 days.

The minister said he had asked the officials to take necessary measure to approve the vaccine for emergency use before it arrived.

If so, the Moderna vaccine would be the sixth vaccine that would get approval for emergency use in the country. Five vaccines – Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sputnik-V, Sinopharm, Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinovac – have been approved by the authorities.

When asked, Zahid Maleque said that the government was expecting vaccines from China within the next few days.

Bangladesh has administered over a 1.01million oxford AstraZeneca vaccines.

This article has been posted by a News Hour Correspondent. For queries, please contact through [email protected]
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