Govt plans to vaccinate 7.5m with second, booster doses today
Spl Covid vaccination campaign
FE REPORT | Tuesday, 19 July 2022
The government has planned to vaccinate some 7.5 million people with booster and second doses during the countrywide special coronavirus immunisation campaign to be held today (Tuesday).
The campaign will start at all government medical hospitals, specialised hospitals, district and Sadar hospitals and upazila health complexes simultaneously, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said during a press briefing at the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) in the city on Monday.
To complete the nationwide inoculation drive, he said that the health directorate had already prepared 16,181 vaccination centres across the country, while a total of 33,246 health workers and 49,869 volunteers would work during the campaign.
"Those who received the second dose four months ago will get the booster dose," the minister said.
Regarding vaccination statistics, he said a total of 76.05 per cent, 70.3 per cent and 17.9 per cent people had so far received the first, second and third doses, respectively, across the country.
There is still a stock of 27.8 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine of five brands (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Sinopharm, Sinovac and Johnson & Johnson), the health minister told the press.
Urging people to get vaccinated, Mr Maleque said various studies had shown that the majority of the people, who received at least two doses of the jab along with a booster dose, did not require to be hospitalised even after the viral infections.
Sources at the DGHS said that the regular programme of giving the first and second dose would continue on the booster dose campaign day.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh recorded 1,072 new cases along with 7 deaths due to the viral disease across the country in the last 24 hours till Monday morning.
With the latest figures, the entire number of coronavirus infections rose to 1,997,412 while the death toll remained unchanged at 29,241.
The infection rate was 9.77 per cent as the daily caseload came from medical screening of 10,974 samples from 880 labs across the country.
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