Students Aged 12-17: Trial run of Covid vaccine shots today
The health directorate will conduct a trial run of Covid-19 vaccination of school students at Colonel Malek Medical College Hospital in Manikganj today.
Prof Abul Bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam, director general of the Directorate General of Health Services, made the announcement in a Facebook Live yesterday afternoon.
As more and more countries around the world are beginning to roll out Covid vaccines to children aged over 12, Bangladesh will also join the list through today's vaccination.
"We will inoculate a group of students, aged 12-17, from two schools with Pfizer vaccine. We will observe them for 10-14 days to see whether there is any side effect," Prof Khurshid said.
According to health officials, the DGHS has planned to vaccinate 100 schoolchildren as part of the trial run scheduled to start at noon.
The DG said, "We have selected the medical college hospital as the vaccination centre for technical reasons."
If the trial run is successful, the child vaccination campaign will be launched in a large scale in Dhaka, he said.
The DGHS has around 60 lakh doses of Pfizer vaccines in stock with which around 30 lakh schoolchildren will be vaccinated, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said at a press conference on Sunday.
Besides, another 70 lakh vaccine jabs will reach the country soon, he added.
The government has an initial plan to run the child vaccination programme in 21 districts.
While many countries are vaccinating children to stop the spread of novel coronavirus, the World Health Organization has authorised only the Pfizer vaccine for 12-17 age group.
Meanwhile, India has authorised its homegrown Covid-19 vaccine -- Covaxin -- for this age group this week.
17 DIE, 518 GET COVID
Seventeen more people died from Covid-19 in 24 hours till 8:00am yesterday, said a DGHS press release.
With this, the total number of Covid deaths in the country now stands at 27,730 and the death rate is 1.77 percent.
At least 518 new infections were recorded during the period, taking the number of people infected to 15,64,019, added the release.
The positivity rate was 2.34 percent against 22,153 samples tested across the country in the 24 hours.
At least 505 Covid patients have recovered during the period.
The number of recoveries rose to 15,25,673 and the recovery rate was 97.54 percent.
Among the 17 deceased, eight were men and nine women.
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