A new campaign to vaccinate school students, aged 12-17, against Covid-19 will kick off at 12 centers in Dhaka on November 1.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque disclosed this while talking to reporters after the cabinet meeting on Thursday.

Some 40,000 students will be vaccinated every day under the campaign, the minister said.

However, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asked the officials concerned to increase the number of centres across the country under this campaign. “And so far 21 AC centres have been selected at the district level for this purpose,” said Zahid Maleque.

Also read: Trial run for school vaccination to begin Thursday with 100 Manikganj students

“Soon, school children across the country will be brought under the vaccination drive,” he said.

The school students will be vaccinated with US-made Pfizer vaccine as it is suitable for them, he said, adding that 35 lakh more Pfizer jabs will arrive in November.

The Health Ministry has already received some lists of eligible students from the Education Ministry and sent those to the ICT Division for registration, he added.

On October 14, some 112 students of four government schools in Manikganj were vaccinated with Pfizer jabs as part of a test run of the government for vaccinating school students against Covid-19.

On October 11, Zahid Maleque said the World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the vaccination of those who are under 18 years of age in Bangladesh.

Also read: Bangladesh kicks off second phase of mass vaccination drive

Currently, the second phase of the special nationwide mass vaccination drive is going on Thursday (today), aiming to vaccinate 80 lakh people with the second shot in a day.

So far, some 4,12,68,810 people have got their first Covid shots, while 2,13,32,289 were administered the second ones as of October 28, according to the Health Ministry.