Bangladesh PM’s Special Assistant confirms Sinopharm dose at $ 10 each

Tuesday, 1 June 2021 02:49 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Bangladesh Prime Minister’s Special Assistant Shah Ali Farhad

The Bangladesh Prime Minister’s Special Assistant Shah Ali Farhad has confirmed his country’s decision to buy 15 million doses of Sinopharm from China at $ 10 each in a full contract worth $ 150 million.

In an update on his Facebook account Farhad said the purchase was under a G2G (government to government) arrangement.

Farhad’s confirmation validates Bangladesh media reports to the effect that it was paying $ 10 per dose as opposed to $ 15 by Sri Lanka.

Following are other comments in the update by Farhad:

“Shipments will arrive in Bangladesh in three phases: June, July and August; with five million doses in each consignment. So far, Bangladesh has received 500,000 doses of the said vaccine as ‘gift’ from the Government of China. This week, we learnt that China is sending another 600,000 doses of the same vaccine as gift.

“Bangladesh is also working with China on the co-production of Sinovac, another Chinese COVID vaccine. A team from China will visit Bangladesh soon to assess the feasibility of vaccine co-production. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Government is pursuing all possible avenues to get our citizens vaccinated at the earliest. This is a priority for our Prime Minister. Almost nine million people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 in Bangladesh so far.

“Our deal with Serum Institute of India for 30 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine still stands. However, due to the devastating situation in India, they have stopped all exports of vaccines. High-level diplomatic efforts are underway to get that arrangement resumed as well. As part of our contract, we received seven million doses from Serum. It should be remembered that before India was hard hit by the second wave of COVID-19, they had sent us an additional 3.2 million doses of the same vaccine as gift, meaning Bangladesh received a total of 10.3 million vaccine doses from India. Negotiations with Russia are also nearing completion regarding importing and/or producing their Sputnik-V vaccine.

“The relevant authority of the Government of Bangladesh has already given emergency approval for its use. Bangladesh is also set to receive a consignment of 106,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine under the global program COVAX, on 2 June. On the diplomatic front, Bangladesh has requested the USA for four million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and UK for 1.6 million doses of the same vaccine. We are yet to hear back from either of these countries. It has also intensified efforts in the international arena to ensure that developing nations get their fair share of the vaccine under the Covax arrangement.”