Over 1 lakh doses of Pfizer vaccine to arrive tomorrow night

A consignment of 1,00,620 doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine will arrive in the country on Monday.

A flight carrying the doses will land in Dhaka at 11.20 pm, said Health Ministry in a press release.

However, the decision on who will be eligible to get these shots and when they will be administered are yet to be made.

Bangladesh will be receiving the Pfizer doses via the international vaccine alliance Gavi under its worldwide vaccination initiative Covax.

Earlier on 27 May, the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) approved the Pfizer mRNA Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in Bangladesh, removing all legal barriers to the import and use of this vaccine.

Pfizer has been approved as the fourth vaccine to be used in the country. Earlier, the Oxford-AstraZeneca's Covishield, Russia's Sputnik-V, and China's Sinopharm vaccines got emergency use authorisation (EUA) in Bangladesh.

According to the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA), Pfizer's is a two-dose vaccine, the second dose of which will be given three weeks after the first dose.

The Pfizer vaccine was earlier required to be stored at minus 90 to minus 60 degrees Celsius. So, the cold chain maintenance of the Pfizer vaccine was a concern for Bangladesh.

The US Food and Drug Administration on 26 May authorized storage of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at standard refrigerator temperatures for up to one month, in an effort to make the vaccine more widely available, reports Reuters.

Unopened, thawed vials of the vaccine can be stored in a refrigerator at 2 to 8 degrees Celsius for up to a month, up from a previous maximum limit of five days.

US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer told the Indian government that their Covid-19 vaccine can be administered to everyone aged 12 years and above and can also be stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius for up to one month, sources told news agency ANI.