Govt will be successful in Covid-19 vaccination, hopes Kamal

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today expressed his firm optimism that Bangladesh would become successful in Covid-19 vaccination since all necessary works are being done to this end.

"The question of the entire nation right now is – when the government will start giving Covid-19 vaccines to people and when almost all people will come under the vaccination. It's not a hard task to bring vaccines, but the tough job is to bring all people under the coverage of vaccine. We hope we'll become successful," he said.

The finance minister was replying to a question virtually after chairing two separate meetings on Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs and Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase (CCGP) through online platform.

He noted that it is not possible to give vaccines to the entire population of the country in a single day, rather it would take time to give vaccines to the crores of people for which vaccination would be carried out in different phases.

Kamal said people will be identified for giving vaccines in different stages and hopefully most of the people of the country would come under the vaccination.

Replying to a question, he said the vaccines being produced in India might cost less than other ones. "But, we'll remain cautious so that we do not suffer. We'll also look into the price of vaccines in international market and also in which price we're getting those and thus we'll try to control if the price goes up."

Kamal said scopes are there for exploring alternate sources of getting vaccines and the government will definitely go for alternate sources if the prices of vaccines go up while taking those from a country.

The first installment of the Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine from Serum Institute of India (SII) would arrive by January 25. A total of 50 lakh doses will be administered in the first month to 25 lakh people, two doses per person.

As per the contract, Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd will deliver the three crore doses to the district level EPI storages from SII in six phases.