Mohammad Al-Masum Molla

The Covid-19 situation has improved remarkably in India but there is no sign yet from the neighbouring country of resuming supply of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine Covishield, abruptly held up for own use.

Serum Institute, the vaccine manufacturer in India, has remained tight-lipped despite repeated communications from the Bangladesh government for the doses it paid for.

Serum Institute has not sent a single dose after February, putting the country’s vaccination campaign in jeopardy, and more pressingly leaving around 15 lakh people -- waiting for the second doses -- in limbo.

It has supplied 70 lakh doses of Covishield in two instalments from the three crore doses Dhaka procured. According to the contract, Serum was supposed to send 50 lakh doses each month between January and June.

Bangladesh’s inoculation drive, which began on February 7 and revolved mainly around Serum’s supply, came to a grinding halt after New Delhi suspended vaccine exports in the last week of April due to a massive surge of Covid-19 infections in India.

In terms of coronavirus cases, India is one of the worst-hit countries in the world with the pandemic claiming 4,01,050 lives and 30,502,362 people getting infected there.

However, as the situation in India has improved significantly over the past few weeks due to massive vaccination, with the daily positivity rate coming down to 2.34 percent, health officials in Bangladesh hope the embargo on vaccine exports will be removed soon.