Children aged 5-11 to get Covid jabs from 11 August

Children aged five to 11 will get Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine doses on a trial basis in Dhaka on 11 August, Minister for Health and Family Planning Zahid Maleque said on Sunday.

The full-fledged vaccination programme for children will start on 26 August, the minister said at the inaugural ceremony of World Breastfeeding Week at the National Institute of Preventive and Social Medicine (Nipsom) auditorium in Dhaka's Mohakhali.

Another 1.5 million Pfizer Coronavirus vaccine doses specifically designed for children arrived on Sunday, he said.

Earlier on 30 July, Covax sent another 1.52 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.

"With over 3 million doses in stock, we will be able to vaccinate around 1.5 million children aged five to 11 years. Later, more vaccines will be brought for children," the minister added.

"The vaccines will first be administered at schools. Later, vaccination will be expanded to the community stage," Dr Shamsul Haque, member secretary of the Covid-19 Vaccine Deployment Committee, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), told The Business Standard earlier.

So far, over 0.5 million children aged five to 11 years have been registered for taking Covid-19 vaccines. The World Health Organisation (Who) has already approved Bangladesh for inoculating children aged five to 12 years.

Earlier in November last year, school and college students aged 12-17 years were given Pfizer vaccine shots.

Bangladesh has administered the first dose of the vaccine to 17.3 million students so far and the second dose has been given to 16 million students.

The country reported zero death and 216 fresh cases from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours till Sunday 8am. 

Earlier on 29 June, the country reported zero covid death. The positivity rate was recorded at 5.10% during the same period after testing 4,233 samples across the country, according to the DGHS data.

So far, 29,302 people have died and 20,07335 tested positive for the virus since the outbreak hit the country in 2020.