Dhaka (dpa) – Bangladesh has approved the emergency use of the Russia-made Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, as it faces a decline in its stock of the Oxford-AstraZeneca-developed jab following an Indian ban on vaccine export, an official said on Tuesday.
“We have given the approval for the emergency use of this vaccine [Sputnik V],” Major General Mahbubur Rahman, head of Bangladesh’s Directorate General of Drug Administration, told reporters in Dhaka.
Bangladesh will now be able to import the Russian vaccine to continue its mass inoculation against the novel coronavirus, he said.
The country may import some 4 million doses of the Russian vaccine by the end of next month, he added.
Bangladesh began its nationwide vaccination campaign in early February with doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine imported from the Serum Institution of India (SII), the largest vaccine producer in the world.
But the country was forced to suspended dosing on Monday due to a supply crunch after India said it could not export the vaccine because of high demand in India, which is struggling to combat the worst-ever virus surge.
A country of 160 million people, Bangladesh initially set a target of 15 million people vaccinated by June after it signed an agreement in November to import 30 million jabs from SII.
But it has received only 10.2 million doses – including 3.2 million doses as gift – from India, so far.
Bangladesh’s health directorate says nearly 8.2 million doses had been used as of Monday.