Bangladesh to sign COVID-19 vaccine co-production agreement with China: FM

ISLAMABAD -- To strengthen its campaign against the alarming spike in the COVID-19 spread in the country, Bangladesh has planned to sign an agreement with China for vaccine co-production, reported Pakistani daily The Nation, citing Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen.

The agreement would be signed very soon and the co-production will start in a few weeks, the foreign minister was quoted as saying in a recent report.

Earlier on Tuesday, Minister-Counselor of the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka Yan Hualong also confirmed in a Facebook post the planned cooperation between the two countries.

"We shall soon be coming for vaccine co-producing," said Yan.

Bangladesh's Health Ministry also confirmed that 1.7 million Chinese Sinopharm vaccines, under the UN's COVAX facility, has arrived in Dhaka.

On Wednesday, Bangladeshi Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal told media the government needs around 276 million vaccine doses to achieve its target to inoculate over 138 million people.

Bangladesh has so far fully vaccinated only 5 million people while 15 million people have taken the first dose of the two-jab vaccines, the paper reported.

Bangladesh has registered 1.4 million COVID-19 cases with over 23,000 deaths and more than 1.2 million recoveries.