10 lakh Covishield vaccines to reach Dhaka from India today

Ten lakh doses of Covishield vaccines is scheduled to reached Dhaka from Serum Institute of India (SII) today.

The vaccines will reach Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 5:40pm, confirmed Nazmul Hassan Papon, managing director of Beximco Pharmaceuticals.

Earlier, India allowed SII to export 10 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine Covishield each to Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar.

SII entered into a commercial contract with Beximco Pharma to supply a certain quantity of Covishield vaccine but that was halted following the devastating second wave of the pandemic that overwhelmed India in March-April-May.

Pune-based pharmaceutical company SII has also been allowed to supply bulk of around three crore Covishield vaccine doses to AstraZeneca in the UK.

SII has enhanced the manufacturing capacity of Covishield to more than 20 crore doses per month and has informed the Indian government that it will be able to supply around 22 crore doses in October.

The Covid-19 vaccine Covishied has been developed by SII in collaboration with Oxford University and AstraZeneca under technology transfer.