First consignment of Pfizer’s Covid vaccines for children reaches Dhaka

The country today (July 30) received the first consignment of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccines for children.

A total of 15,02,400 doses of specially prepared Pfizer vaccine arrived in Dhaka, said M Shamsul Haque, director of the health department.

The vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech are meant for children aged 5-11 years, Dr Shamsul Haque, member secretary of the Covid-19 Vaccine Deployment Committee of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), said.

"We plan to start a school-based vaccination from next month," Dr Haque said, adding, "But the date to begin vaccination is yet to be fixed."

"The date will be finalised at the policy-making stage. Hopefully, vaccination will be possible next month," he said, adding that the vaccination will begin in Dhaka city.

"After sending to schools, we have children in the community who do not come to school. We will organise vaccination campaign for them too," he added.

The government announced the decision to vaccinate 5 to 11-year-old children last April.

With the help of the Ministry of Education, the work for preparing the list of children has been going on through the concerned educational institutions.

The number of children of this age in the country is about 4 crore 40 lakh.

The health department has got a guarantee of 4 crore 10 lakh vaccines to give them.

Children will be vaccinated with two doses and 8 crore 80 lakh doses of vaccine will be required for this.

The health department started giving Covid-19 vaccine to the people from February 2021.