Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday said the government is going to set up an international vaccine institute to produce vaccines, including the Covid-19 ones, in Bangladesh.
She said this in parliament while replying to a tabled question from Awami League MP Ahasanul Islam Titu (Tangail 6).
She said the government will sign an agreement with South Korea to set up the vaccine institute and the issues relating to ratification, accession and approval of the agreement by the cabinet are under process.
The prime minister said the government has taken an initiative to produce Covid-19 vaccines in the country alongside collection from foreign sources to check the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.
She said government-to-government (G2G) negotiations are underway with the countries that have developed vaccines for transferring technology to this end.
She said the capacity of three firms -- Incepta Pharmaceuticals, Popular Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Pharmaceuticals -- have already been assessed over the production of Covid-19 vaccines.
Globe Biotech Ltd is working on a Covid vaccine. “The vaccine developed by Globe Biotech is now at the trial stage,” added Hasina.
Replying to another question from Jatiya Party MP Fakhrul Imam, she said the government has so far approved the emergency use of five vaccines for their import.
The vaccines are Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm (China), Sputnik-V (Russia), Pfizer-BioNTech (USA/Germany) and CronaVac (China).
She said Bangladesh has so far collected a total of 10,800,620 shots of Covid vaccines from different foreign sources. Of these, 10,200,000 shots, including the gifted ones, came from India, while 500,000 from Sinopharm and 100,620 doses from Pfizer.
As of June 5 last, 58,22,177 people were given the first doses of vaccines, while 42,09,510 given the second doses, the prime minister told the House.
