3m Moderna shots to arrive tomorrow
The United States will send 3 million doses of the Moderna vaccine to Bangladesh tomorrow, taking its total supplies to 5.6 million doses.
Earl R Miller, US ambassador to Bangladesh, yesterday tweeted, "Pleased to announce another gift of 3 million doses of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine coming to Bangladesh from the American people via COVAX."
He said the US was committed to increasing the country's vaccine supply to beat the pandemic here and worldwide.
In early June, the US has supplied 1.06 lakh Pfizer vaccines and on July 3 it provided another 2.5 million Moderna vaccines to Bangladesh.
The vaccines are part of US President Joe Biden's commitment to donate at least 80 million doses from the US' own vaccine supply to the world.
He also committed to allocate 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine for distribution by COVAX to countries around the world.
Besides, two million doses of Sinopharm vaccines from China will be arriving shortly, according to a diplomatic source.
Under a commercial deal of supplying 15 million Sinopharm vaccines, China supplied 2 million Sinopharm jabs in early July.
Besides, China has gifted 1.1 million Sinopharm vaccines and has announced 1 million more as a gift to Bangladesh.
After a gap due to the halt of vaccine export from India in March after the Serum Institute of India's supply of 7 million of the contracted 30 million AstraZeneca vaccines, Bangladesh last week began a nationwide vaccination campaign amid rising infections.
The Indian government had also gifted 3.3 million AstraZeneca vaccines. Bangladesh has been desperately seeking to get the supply of at least 16 lakh AstraZeneca vaccines as some 16 lakh people have yet to get a second dose of the vaccine.
Japan, meanwhile, announced supplying 2.9 million AstraZeneca under COVAX. The date of its arrival could not be known yet.
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