Inoculation of school students starts this week
The campaign to vaccinate school students -- aged between 12 and 17 -- will start this week, Prof Abul Bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam, director general of the Directorate General of Health Services, said yesterday.
"Pfizer vaccine will be used to vaccinate the schoolchildren," he said while talking to reporters following an event at his office, reports UNB.
"The school authorities will provide us with lists of their students. We'll pass that on to the Surokkha app server afterwards," he said.
He added that 21 centres have been selected at the district and city corporation levels across the country for this purpose.
"We will run trials initially, 50 to 100 children will be selected for this," he said.
He came up with this announcement two days after Health Minister Zahid Maleque said the government would start child vaccination soon.
At a press conference on Sunday in the capital, the minister also said the government has a stock of 60 lakh Pfizer vaccine shots and 30 lakh children will be inoculated with those initially.
Besides, another 70 lakh Pfizer vaccine jabs will come soon, the minister added.
Earlier this month, Education Minister Dipu Moni said preparations were underway to vaccinate school students who are above 12 years old.
On September 11, students of schools and colleges in Bangladesh returned to their classrooms after a prolonged closure due to the pandemic.
According to officials, there are around one crore students in this age group, 12-17 years.
Since the reopening of in-person classes, there have been no notable cases of infection among students yet.
However, Dipu Moni on September 26 said educational institutions will be closed if there is any possibility of Covid cases going up.
14 DIE, 543 NEW CASES
Fourteen more people died from Covid-19 in 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday, said a DGHS press release.
The total number of Covid-19 deaths in the country now stands at 27,713, and the death rate is 1.77 percent.
At least 543 new infections were recorded during the period, taking the number of people infected to 15,63,501, the release added.
The current positivity rate is 2.35 percent, while the overall positivity rate stands at 15.64 percent.
Some 23,155 samples were tested across the country in the 24 hours.
At least 701 Covid-19 patients have recovered during the period.
With this, the number of recoveries reaches 15,25,168.
The recovery rate is 97.55 percent.
Among the 14 deceased, 10 were men and four women.
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