Serum Vaccine to Arrive on 25/26 January: Health Minister

On January 25/26, the Indian Serum Institute will export the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to Bangladesh, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said.

In addition, the Indian government will send some Covid vaccines as a gift to Bangladesh, the minister made the remark today in a briefing at the Dhaka Reporters' Unity in the capital, reports media.

Zahid Maleque said, "Bangladesh is doing better than many developed countries including USA, UK, Germany and Italy in curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus."

"We made wearing mask mandatory here in Bangladesh under the slogan of 'no mask, no service', which actually worked well to control the virus spread," the Minister added.

"In many developed countries including USA, Germany, Covid-19 patients were treated in tents, whereas we arranged adequate hospitals, beds, ICUs for Covid patients," he added.

Zahid Maleque further said, "Initially, hospitals were not treating Covid patients, but we convinced them to do so and no patients remained unattended."

Some private hospitals were found involved in corruptions, legal actions were taken accordingly against many of them including Regent Hospital's Shahed Karim, he told the reporters.

Mentioning that many countries including USA faced medicine crisis during pandemic, the health minister said, "Bangladesh did not face any such problem, rather we are exporting PPEs."