DHAKA, April 22, 2021 (BSS) – Foreign Minister Dr A K Abdul Momen
today said Bangladesh will purchase Chinese vaccine soon while Beijing
have given pledge to provide six lakh doses of COVID-19 inoculates as
a gift first.
“They (China) will give us their vaccine soon .. so the fear of
vaccine shortage won’t be taken place here (Bangladesh),” he told
media at his residence in the capital today.
He said, apart from selling vaccine to Bangladesh, Beijing will
also send six lakh doses of vaccine to Dhaka as a gift.
“I am expecting to get that 6 lakh doses of vaccine as gift very
soon,” he added.
Dr Momen said Beijing has also given a proposal to make an emergency
vaccine storage for six countries – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China,
Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – for urgent use.
“We have already agreed with that (Chinese) proposal in principle”,
he said, adding that a foreign ministerial level meeting among those
six countries is supposed to be held on February 27 to discuss
COVID-19 cooperation among South Asian nations.
The minister said Bangladesh didn’t show much interest about
Chinese vaccine earlier as their vaccine is not approved by the World
Health Organization (WHO). But, he said, Dhaka now observed that more
than 100 million people have already taken Chinese vaccine without
complexity while China exported its vaccine to 80 countries around the
globe.
After fearing that India could get run out of vaccine for its own
citizens while its opposition leaders demanding an immediate
moratorium on the export of vaccines, Dhaka started vigorously hunting
for other sources for getting the high demanded inoculation.
Apart from China, Dhaka and Moscow also agreed in principle to
manufacture Russian ‘Sputnik’ COVID-19 vaccine in Bangladesh in
collaboration with the local pharmaceuticals under a co-production
arrangement.
The foreign minister said that Bangladesh would also purchase
vaccine from Russian apart from producing those here.
On January 21, Bangladesh received its first ever COVID-19 vaccine
consignment while India sent 20 million doses as gift as part of their
neighborhood plus policy.
Later, during the visit of Indian premier Narendra Modi here,
Bangladesh also got 1.2 million doses of vaccine as gift.
Apart from the gift, Bangladesh purchased 30 million doses of
India-made vaccine under a tripartite memorandum of understanding
(MoU) signed on November 5 and a subsequent agreement on December 13
among Bangladesh government, Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd (BPL) and the
Serum Institute of India (SII).
As per the agreement, Bangladesh is supposed to receive 5 million
doses in each month, but after getting seven million of doses, Dhaka
is yet to receive the second consignment that was scheduled to arrive
here by March.
“They (India) have been telling us that they would send the
vaccines… they never said that they couldn’t,” Momen told BSS
earlier this week.
He said Dhaka keeps confidence in Indian assurance and is hopeful to
get all the 30 million doses of vaccine within the timeframe of the
agreement.
Meanwhile, spokesperson of Indian high commission here today said
that India would continue to do its best to support the vaccine
rollout in neighborhood countries.
“We can only share what is actually available and the fact is that
there is a huge amount of demand and not enough supply,” he told media
in a What’s App message.
As production is increased to meet the increased demand in India
and globally, it will be possible to increase supplies, he added.