Bangladesh began inoculation of second dose of COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday. With a gap of eight weeks, the first dose recipients would receive the jabs from the vaccination centers.
The country began the mass vaccination against coronavirus on February 7.
Bangladesh is using Oxford-AstraZeneca developed vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India.
Until Wednesday, nearly 56 lakh people took the first dose of the vaccine. The first dose and second dose inoculation would continue simultaneously.
Bangladesh has secured 1.02 crore doses of the vaccine.
The country got 70 lakh doses of the vaccine from Serum Institute under a purchase deal of 3 crore doses by June this year and 32 lakh doses from India as gift.
Uncertainty grew over the vaccines supply from Serum in recent days as the vaccine manufacturer did not supply the vaccines in March.
Serum is supposed to deliver 50 lakh doses every month and 1.5 crore doses by March but so far only 70 lakh doses were delivered to Bangladesh.
Expanded Program of Immunisation director Shamsul Haque told New Age that they had started the second dose inoculation from Thursday with the available doses and expected that more doses would arrive from Serum and COVAX initiative of World Health Organisation and global vaccine alliance GAVI.
