Covid-19: Mass Vaccination Begins Saturday

The government has confirmed its previous plan to conduct a mass vaccination programme against Covid-19 from Saturday to contain the rapid spread of the deadly virus in the country, the health ministry confirmed in a notice.  

The Cabinet earlier on July 27 announced the decision to begin Covid-19 inoculation of rural people through Union Parishad from August 7 to bring one crore people under the programme, reports media.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque said it would be a walk-in vaccination programme as people would need no prior registration and be allowed to receive vaccine shots just by showing their national identity cards (NID).

However, on Thursday, the Director-General of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Professor Abul Bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam said the vaccination campaign would start on Saturday only as a trial run and it would not continue week-long.

He termed lack of enough vaccines and manpower crisis a bar to vaccination of the targeted number of people and said and the main special campaign would begin from August 14.

More to follow...