The authorities have started supplying the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to the districts as the nation is waiting for mass vaccination from February 7.

By the end of Friday 36 districts received the allotted vaccine doses, which were transported by Beximco Pharma from its warehouse in Tongi, officials said.

‘We want to ensure supplies to all the districts by Sunday,’ said Expanded Programme of Immunisation director Shamsul Haque.

‘By Friday 36 districts received the required vaccine doses,’ he added.

Beximco Pharma chief operating officer Rabbur Reza said that they had successfully sent the vaccine to 36 civil surgeon offices on Friday safely and smoothly.

Bangladesh inaugurated the COVID-19 vaccination on Wednesday with the inoculation of 26 frontline workers.

In the first run, 541 people, including two ministers, two secretaries and healthcare providers, were given the jab on Thursday to observe them for a week before rolling out the nationwide vaccination on February 7.

Shamsul, also the member-secretary of the national vaccine deployment plan, said that so far no side effects had been reported from the vaccine recipients.

‘Everyone is doing well, without any major problems,’ he said.

Shamsul said that the districts were being supplied with vaccine doses as per the requirement based on the size of the population who would be vaccinated in the first phase.

‘We’ve taken all-out preparations to ensure a smooth run of the mass vaccination,’ he said.

Beximco, as per the deal with the government, is responsible for transporting the vaccine in a cold chain to the district EPI storages.

The EPI and the health authorities concerned would take the vaccine in cold boxes from districts to upazilas, Shamsul said.

Kushtia was among the districts to get the vaccine on Friday.

The civil surgeon of the district, HM Anwarul Islam, said that they had received 12,000 doses of the vaccine.

‘We’ve stored them in fridges at the district headquarters,’ he said, adding that similar arrangements have been made at the upazilas.

According to the Expanded Programme of Immunisation, 7,344 vaccination teams, with each team comprising two vaccinators and four volunteers, will inoculate the selected people.

There will be vaccination centres at the upazila health complexes, union parishad offices, district hospitals, government and private medical college hospitals, specialised hospitals, hospitals run by the police and other forces and at the TB hospitals, according to a government plan.

‘The vaccine doses will be supplied to the EPI centres at the district and upazila headquarters and the step for union-level vaccination will be taken later as per the need,’ Shamsul of EPI said.

He said that the district vaccination centres were equipped with Walk-In Cold Rooms and Ice Lined Refrigerators.

Cold boxes and vaccine carriers will be used for transporting the vaccine from the upazilas to the field-level vaccination centres, he said.

Bangladesh has so far secured 70 lakh doses of the vaccine developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca and manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest vaccine manufacturer.

The government received the first consignment of 50 lakh doses on January 25 under a deal to buy three crore doses from the Serum through its local distributor Beximco.

The country also received 20 lakh doses of the same vaccine as gift from India on January 21.

The health minister said that the government would get the rest of the vaccine doses under the deal with the Serum by June 2021.

People would need to register their names for the vaccination through the website www.surokkha.gov.bd or the mobile app Surokkha.

Bangladesh, which reported its first three COVID-19 cases on March 8, 2020, has so far tallied 8,094 deaths from the disease and 5.34 lakh cases.