Staff Correspondent<\/p>\n
Russia has proposed to manufacture its \u2018Sputnik\u2019 COVID-19 vaccine in Bangladesh in collaboration with the local pharmaceuticals under a co-production arrangement while Bangladesh is searching other sources apart from India to get the much demanded inoculation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe agreed with them (Russia) in co-production (of vaccine) \u2026 though it\u2019s not finalized yet,\u201d Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen told\u00a0 in a recent interview here.<\/p>\n
Dr Momen said Moscow gave the proposal to manufacture its vaccine here as currently Russia does not have that much production capacity to export its vaccine to Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
As per the proposal, Russia will give the technology and Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies will produce the Sputnik vaccine here, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf things go well \u2026 It will be cheap and hopefully it will be better,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Recently, India has also approved the use of Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, as the country faces vaccine shortages amid an intensifying second wave of the deadly COVID-19 virus.<\/p>\n
After fearing that India could get run out of vaccine for its own citizens while its opposition leaders demanding an immediate moratorium on the export of vaccines, Dhaka started vigorously hunting for other sources including China for getting the high demanded inoculation.<\/p>\n
The minister said Bangladesh didn\u2019t show much interest about Chinese vaccine earlier as their vaccine is not approved by the World Health Organization (WHO).<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, now we are keeping open all options to get vaccine,\u201d Momen said.<\/p>\n
However, he said, China has informed Bangladesh that they would not be able to export any vaccine before December as they have already given commitment to other countries to supply their vaccine.<\/p>\n
Besides, he said, the World Bank recently informed Bangladesh to provide 80 lack doses of vaccine under COVAX by next month. \u201cWe are hopeful to get those vaccines under COVAX,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
COVAX is co-led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and THO that aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccine, and to guarantee fair and equitable access for every country in the world.<\/p>\n
On January 21, Bangladesh received its first ever COVID-19 vaccine consignment while India sent 20 million doses as gift as part of their neighborhood plus policy.<\/p>\n
Later, during the visit of Indian premier Narendra Modi here, Bangladesh also got 1.2 million doses of vaccine as gift.<\/p>\n
Apart from the gift, Bangladesh purchased 30 million doses of India-made vaccine under a tripartite memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on November 5 and a subsequent agreement on December 13 among Bangladesh government, Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd (BPL) and the Serum Institute of India (SII).<\/p>\n
As per the agreement, Bangladesh is supposed to receive 5 million doses in each month, but after the first consignment of 5 million, Dhaka is yet to receive the second consignment of 5 million that was scheduled to arrive here by March.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey (India) have been telling us that they would send the vaccines\u2026 they never said that they couldn\u2019t,\u201d Momen said, adding that Dhaka keeps confidence in Indian assurance and is hopeful to get all the 30 million doses of vaccine within the timeframe of the agreement.<\/p>\n
However, the minister said, Dhaka feared that Indian vaccine production is not enough considering their internal demand and international commitments. \u201cThey (India) have taken more orders than have met,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Momen said, the government is also considering to engage the private sector in importing and marketing commercially expensive vaccine like the Pfizer-BioNTech one in the Bangladesh market to meet the demand.<\/p>\n
The foreign minister said Bangladesh was one of the few countries to get the vaccine first due to farsighted leadership of Prime minister Sheikh Hasina as she took initiatives regarding this from the day one of spreading the virus.<\/p>\n
The government aims to vaccinate 80 percent of the total population free of cost to check the spreading of the deadly virus.<\/p>\n
In Bangladesh, so far, nearly 5.5 million people have received the first dose of the vaccine while around seven million more registered for the vaccination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Staff Correspondent Russia has proposed to manufacture its \u2018Sputnik\u2019 COVID-19 vaccine in Bangladesh in collaboration with the local pharmaceuticals under a co-production arrangement while Bangladesh is searching other sources apart from India to get the much demanded inoculation. \u201cWe agreed with them (Russia) in co-production (of vaccine) \u2026 though it\u2019s not finalized yet,\u201d Foreign Minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1394,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions\/1394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialherald.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}