Bangladesh green signal for Chinese vaccine for emergency use

Dhaka: Bangladesh's Directorate General of Drug Administration has authorised the emergency use of China's Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine.

Major General Mahbubur Rahman, Director General of the country's drug regulator announced this at a press conference on Thursday, the Xinhua news agency reported.

"We've issued emergency use approval for the Chinese-made jab."

Mahbubur Rahman further said hopefully within 1-1.5 weeks, Bangladesh will receive a batch of Sinopharm vaccine as a gift.

The Bangladeshi government on Wednesday gave the green light to a proposal of producing Chinese and Russian Covid-19 vaccines in the country.

Bangladesh's Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the proposal to produce the vaccines -- China's Sinopharm and Russia's Sputnik V.

The Directorate had earlier cleared the emergency use of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine.

Shahida Akhter, a senior Cabinet Division official, said on Wednesday that several leading Bangladeshi pharmaceutical firms in collaboration with the Chinese and Russian companies will produce the vaccines.

The decisions came days after Dhaka suspended the first administration of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on a supply crunch.

Amid uncertainty over the timely arrival of the next Covid-19 vaccine shipment from India, where a slow rollout of the vaccine has been causing problems, the Bangladeshi government halted administering the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine across the country from Monday.

Nearly six million people have so far received the first dose of the vaccine in Bangladesh.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the country's Covid-19 vaccination drive on January 28 to rein in the pandemic that has so far spread to nearly every Bangladeshi district.

To limit the second wave of the pandemic, Bangladesh on Wednesday extended the ongoing lockdown again by one week to May 5.

(Based on IANS feed with minor edits)