Vaccines should be obtained from multiple sources

The last thing that we wanted to hear now was that Bangladesh should not expect to get the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from India anytime soon. Bangladesh is likely to run out of its stock of 10.2 million doses by the end of May. Clearly, Serum Institute of India (SII) has defaulted on its part of the agreement that it signed with the Bangladesh government, under which it was supposed to supply 5 million doses of Covid -19 vaccines every month. Not surprisingly, the supply of the vaccine has been disrupted due to a shortage of raw materials and India's internal demand. 

While acquiring the vaccines quickly and having about 5.7 million people administered the first jab are commendable tasks, the administration's reliance on a single source for a frontline medicine, without alternative sources, has betrayed poor planning on its part. One can take (SII) to court and do all the admonishments, but it is difficult to ride over the force majeure clause. This we hope will be a lesson for our state planners for future deals.

We have a huge demand for the vaccine, and given the situation in India which has reached the level of disaster, we cannot depend on SII to meet its supply quota of 30 million doses. In any case we need much more than that to immunise the most vulnerable groups before the rest of the country can be given the vaccine. It would have been a good idea to start producing the vaccine in Bangladesh jointly with another country. One wonders why the phase-III clinical trials of the Covaxin, as agreed between Bangladesh and Bharat Biotech in December last year, has not been approved.   Our priority is to knock at all possible sources for the vaccine so that our initial objective to vaccinate the vulnerable groups can be met. We are relieved that COVAX, the Gavi- coordinated Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access will give Bangladesh one lakh doses in May. China has also said it will give vaccines as a gift. Although the latest report on the vaccine is that Serum Institute will be supplying 20 lakh doses by May, we should still pursue local production to avoid the uncertainty created by India's sudden suspension of supply before. In this regard, it is encouraging to learn that Russia is willing to produce the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccines in Bangladesh. The country is waiting for a quick decision.