Mass vaccination registration resumes Thursday as lockdown extended for a week
Moderna vaccines will be used in big cities, Sinopharm shots at upazila level
The registration for mass inoculation against Covid-19 will resume on Thursday, 8 July, and the government has also lowered the minimum age limit for receiving vaccines to 35 from 40.
The Moderna vaccine will be provided in the divisional and other big cities, but not in any town while the Sinopharm vaccine will be administered at the upazila level, said Dr Meerjady Sabrina Flora, additional director general (planning and development) at the DGHS.
"It is yet to be decided when the vaccines will be administered...we hope it will start as soon as possible. Only those who had earlier registered for the vaccination will get the vaccines," she said.
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A notice regarding the renewed registration process will be issued within a day, Professor Dr ABM Khurshid Alam, director general of DGHS, told journalists on Monday.
Meanwhile, the government extended the ongoing nationwide strict lockdown till 14 July to stem the rising tide of Covid-19 infections.
The restrictions, imposed last week, will be effective during the extended period too, said a gazette notification of the Cabinet Division on Monday.
The National Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19 had suggested extending the ongoing strict lockdown by one more week.
On 30 June, the government imposed a nationwide strict lockdown for 1-7 July as the Covid situation turned dangerous in the country.
Online registration for vaccines began on 27 January. Later, due to the shortage of doses, the DGHS stopped the registration process on 5 May. Since then, only students of medical and dental colleges and universities, law enforcement personnel and expatriate workers have been vaccinated on a priority basis.
Some 72,80,131 people have registered for the AstraZeneca vaccine to date. Of them, 42,90,964 people received both the doses and 58,20,015 got the first one.
In addition, 2,237 more people have received two doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine while 71,008 are awaiting their second shots.
The first dose of the Pfizer vaccine has been applied to 1,866 people.
A total of 45 lakh doses of the Covid-19 vaccine – 25 lakh doses of the Moderna vaccine from the USA and 20 lakh Sinopharm jabs from China – arrived in the country on 2 July.
Bangladesh received the Moderna vaccine under the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) and purchased the Sinopharm vaccine.
Currently, the country is providing the second dose of the Oxford- AstraZeneca vaccine on a limited scale.
According to a report by the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) published on Sunday, the Delta variant was detected in 48% of samples in May and 78% in June.
