Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Saturday issued directives for procurement of another three crore doses of the COVID-19 inoculates as the nationwide first round vaccination campaign is underway and in case of unavailability of the jabs from outside Bangladesh itself would produce the vaccines. ‘I already asked our pharmaceutical companies which can produce vaccines to get prepared while we are seeing whether the vaccines are brought to the country,’ she said while addressing a press conference joining virtually from her Ganabhaban residence in the capital marking the United Nation’s final recommendation regarding Bangladesh’s graduation to a developing country from the LDC one. Asked when she herself would receive the jab, Sheikh Hasina said that she will certainly receive vaccine but before that she wanted to bring a certain number of people under the inoculation coverage. Bangladesh received its first ever COVID-19 vaccine consignment on January 21 as India sent 20 lakh doses of vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca as gift. Bangladesh has so far gotten 70 lakh vaccine doses as part of a tripartite memorandum of understanding signed on November 5 and a subsequent agreement on December 13 among Bangladesh government, Beximco Pharmaceuticals Ltd and the Serum Institute of India. Bangladesh earlier received 70 lakh vaccines meaning the country has so far collected 90 lakh vaccines The agreement ensures availability of three crore COVID-19 vaccine doses by June this year from the Serum Institute of India. Bangladesh eventually is expected to get 68 million or 6.80 crore vaccines for 20 per cent of its population or 3.40 crore people from the WHO, COVAX facility. As of February 27, the number of vaccine receivers is 29,84,773 as the countrywide vaccination campaign was launched on February 7. Of them 19,37,026 are male and 10,47,747 female.