Govt sets target to inoculate over 1cr people in 6 days

The government has decided to inoculate more than one crore (100 million) people with Covid-19 vaccines across the country in a week that starts from August 7, according to a Health and Family Welfare Ministry document.

However, the Health and Family Welfare Ministry is holding in stock 48,95,200 vaccines of AstraZeneca and Moderna varieties. The decision to run the rigorous vaccination programme in rural and urban areas from 7 to 12 August across the country was approved by an inter-ministerial meeting, on Tuesday. Home Minister Aasuduzzaman Khan Kamal presided over the meeting.

Heath and Family Welfare Minister Zahid Maleque and Cabinet secretary Khandoker Anwerul Islam attended the meeting, too.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque recently said the government is planning to inoculate one crore of people with Covid-19 vaccines, each month,

"We have calculated that we will get 21 crore doses and we are planning accordingly,” Maleque said.

The Health Ministry proposal---that asked for armed forces members to oversee the inoculation--- was presented before an inter-ministerial meeting on Tuesday.

The Health Ministry will provide US Moderna vaccines in the cities while Chinese Sinovac in rural areas, respectively.

The ministry will also store the second doses of the vaccines after administering the first ones across the country, the document said. As per the document, the health ministry will vaccinate some 1,34,42,000 people in 15,287 wards in rural and urban areas across the country.

Some 1,10,40,000 rural people will get the jabs at various union levels under the government-run Expanded Programme on Immunization within six days.

The city corporation constituencies will administer some 15,58,800 people while Municipalities 8,43,200 people, respectively.

Three vaccination teams in a ward will run the City Corporation vaccination programme while one team will work for a ward in each Upazilla and Municipality, the paper says.

Former director of disease control and directorate general of health services, Benazir Ahmed, said it will be difficult to inoculate one crore people within a week.

“We need two crores of vaccines at hand for such a programme,” he said.

Bangladesh is going through the most frightening stage of coronavirus as the health authorities registered another highest single-day death toll of 258 in the last 24 hours until Tuesday morning.

Besides, 14,925 cases were reported during the period after testing 52,478 samples at 639 government authorised laboratories in the country, according to official data.

With the Delta variant induced virus spreading fast, the country’s fatalities has been hovering at nearly 200 for the last two weeks.