Work on own vaccine plant to start soon

Faced with the harsh reality of vaccine nationalism, the government has planned to set up its own vaccine producing plant so that it is not dependent on other countries in future.

It has so far inoculated less than three percent of the country's 163 million people against Covid-19. The mass vaccination campaign which launched on February 7 stumbled due to non-compliance of international supply commitments.

"We have learnt a lot from this pandemic. The government has decided to set up a vaccine plant... A project proposal is being prepared," Health Minister Zaheed Maleque told The Daily Star, adding that officials will start working to begin production in the shortest possible time. He did not say how much the project might cost.

If everything goes well, it will take around two years to launch production. This pandemic has shown why countries must have a vaccine plant, said the health minister.

Prof Mohammod Shahidullah, chief of the National Technical Advisory Committee (NTAC) on Covid-19, said, "The government should expedite the process... This pandemic has opened our eyes and showed us how important a vaccine plant is."

Prof Muzaherul Huq, a former adviser to WHO in South-East Asia, said the authorities can entrust the Essential Drugs for the task, but it would have been better to strengthen the Institute of Public Health (IPH) which already has experience in producing vaccines.

"As IPH has infrastructure and human resources. The government could launch production within a shorter period with technology transfer, recruitment and training. It's a good move from the government, but we have to do it fast," said Huq, also a former director of IPH.

Bangladesh needs other vaccines too, he said. "If the government acts fast, we might even export vaccines in the future."

However, Be-Nazir, former director of the health directorate, has a different opinion regarding the IPH.

He said the IPH was once capable of producing vaccines, but it had been ruined. "Reviving the IPH is a very difficult task as it does not have the laboratory facilities and skilled people. It can still be restructured and made ready to produce vaccines, but it will take time and money."

Be-Nazir supported the decision to choose Essential Drugs and said the move will bring good results.

"We need to have our own institution. Every year, we will need many vaccines for our children. We will be able to produce them at our own institutions. We can also export them after meeting local demands."

According to Unicef, which is tracking the doses distributed across the world through COVAX and other agreements, the majority of high-income countries have secured at least 350% of the doses they need (without accounting for vaccines that  are yet to be released). Meanwhile, the agreements reached by low- and middle-income countries for doses to be delivered by 2023 cover half their populations, or less.

The developed and richer nations have already inoculated a large part of their population which is in stark contrast to the poor or developing countries.

Developed nations have been planning to return to normalcy while the developing or poor countries are still witnessing the surge of Covid-19 cases along with no or very poor vaccination.

While a handful of well-off nations have reached the 50 percent vaccination mark, at least 41 countries have yet to provide at least one dose to 2 percent of their population, according to New York Times data from May 29.

Bangladesh suspended administering the first dose of the Oxford vaccine on April 26 amid depleting stocks.

The administration of the second dose has also been suspended in many places.

The mass inoculation started  with a target of vaccinating all the citizens aged 18 and above in phases. The government suspended the vaccination registration process on May 5.

The inoculation campaign stumbled after Serum Institute of India failed to ship Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines. As per an agreement, Bangladesh was supposed to receive three crore shots of the vaccine in phases from January to June. Serum delivered the first 50 lakh doses in January, but shipped only 20 lakh shots the following month. No shipment has been received since then.

The country was also supposed to get 6.8 crore doses from COVAX, a global initiative, by this year, but so far has received only 1.06 lakh doses of the Pfizer vaccine.

The inoculation resumed last week on a limited scale with a stock of around 11 lakh Sinopharm vaccine doses received as a gift from China.

Bangladesh has written to AstraZeneca seeking its formula to produce the shots locally, but has yet to get a response. The government has also talked with Russia and China over local production of Covid vaccines, but a final agreement is still to be reached.