Bangladesh will receive more than 2 lakh doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, as a gift, from the Maldives tonight.

A bilateral agreement was signed between the Maldives' Health Minister Ahmed Naseem and Rear Admiral Mohammad Nazmul Hassan, the Bangladesh high commissioner to the archipelagic state, Wednesday.

As a token of goodwill, the Maldives has gifted Bangladesh 201,800 vaccine doses.

The shots, handed over by the Maldives' Ministry of Health, will arrive at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, via Doha tonight, on a Qatar Airways flight.

Read: US ambassador hands over 2.5 million Pfizer vaccine doses to Bangladesh

The gift will strengthen the existing ties between the two countries, said the Bangladesh High Commission in the Maldives.

Covid-19 infections are decreasing in the Maldives. The country has administered at least 733,220 doses of Covid vaccines so far – enough vaccinations to cover 69% of its population, assuming every person needs two shots.

Bangladesh is now administering vaccines developed by four companies – AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinopharm.

The country has administered at least 53,016,220 doses of Covid vaccines so far – enough to have vaccinated about 15.9% of its population, assuming every person needs two doses.

Bangladesh has administered 7,759,714 shots of AstraZeneca as the first dose and 5,414,090 as the second dose so far.

Read: Dhaka to receive 7.90 lakh AstraZeneca vaccine doses Saturday

The Covid vaccines cannot offer 100 per cent protection but when more people are jabbed there is less opportunity for the virus to infect and spread, say experts.

Getting vaccinated prevents severe illness, hospitalisations, and death; and with the Delta variant, this is more urgent than ever, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.