Trial vaccination for school children begins in Manikganj Thursday

The government will begin a trial vaccination campaign for school students aged between 12 and 17 years in Manikganj area on Thursday.

ABM Khurshid Alam, director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), came up with the announcement in a virtual programme on Wednesday.

The trial vaccination programme will begin at Colonel Maleque Medical College around 12pm, Alam said.

“We have chosen students aged between 12 and 17 years from two government schools and we will inject Pfizer vaccines to them,” he said.

After the vaccination, the health DG said they will observe the side effects of the vaccinated children for 10 to 14 days.  

“After successful completion of the trial run, we will go for a vaccination programme for the school students in Dhaka on a large scale in connivance with the health and education ministries and others,” he said.   

Earlier on Tuesday, the DG of the DGHS said that the inoculation drive for school children will start this week.

The government is going to kick off the trial vaccination drive for the children when Covid-19 claimed 17 more lives and infected 518 others in the last 24 hours till Wednesday morning in Bangladesh.

The present positivity rate of the virus now stood at 2.34 percent during the period.

With the fresh numbers, the Covid-19 fatalities reached 27,730 in Bangladesh while the caseload mounted to 15,64,019.