coronavirus vaccine
Do I need to get tested for COVID-19 if I’m vaccinated?
Do I need to get tested for COVID-19 if I’m vaccinated?
Yes, if you’ve been around someone who has COVID-19.
Read: Should vaccinated people mask up with COVID-19 cases rising?
The latest guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people who are fully vaccinated should get tested three to five days after a potential exposure, even if they don’t have symptoms.
That change comes two months after the agency eased its initial testing guidance. In May, the CDC said vaccinated people face very little risk of serious illness and don’t need to be tested in most cases, even if exposed to someone who was sick. The thinking was that vaccinated people also weren’t likely to spread it to others.
But the agency says it’s reversing that guidance because of the more contagious delta variant, which now accounts for most COVID-19 infections.
The COVID-19 vaccines are still very good at protecting people from getting seriously ill, but the CDC says new data shows vaccinated people infected with the delta variant could spread it to others.
Read:Bhutan fully vaccinates 90% of eligible adults within a week
Doctors, nurses and other health care workers should consult with their employers, some of whom may require routine testing for their staff. People working in prisons and homeless shelters are also generally subject to stepped-up testing requirements.
U.S. citizens returning from abroad still have to present a negative COVID-19 test before boarding their flights home, regardless of their vaccination status. Anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 should still isolate for 10 days, the CDC says.
Kushtia man ends up 'fully vaccinated' in ten minutes
A man received two consecutive jabs of Covid vaccine in Khoksa Upazila Health Complex in Kushtia just within 10 minutes Thursday.
Basharuzzaman, 38, resident of Bujruk Mirzapur village went to the designated room of the health complex at noon with his vaccination card to receive the first jab of the Covid vaccine.
After receiving the first jab he mistakenly entered the room again and the nurse on duty gave him another shot of the vaccine.
Read: Covid-19: Bangladesh lowers vaccination age to 25
Later when he asked the nurse if he was supposed to receive back-to-back two shots of the vaccine like that, the matter got the attention of everyone present there.
Currently all the Covid-19 vaccines being distributed in Bangladesh are all two-shot vaccines. Timeline for receiving the second dose after the first one is between 3-6 weeks.
Vaccine recipient Basaruzzaman said he didn’t know the system and stood again in line after receiving the first shot.
Upazila Health officer Dr Md Kamruzzaman said it’s Basaruzzaman’s mistake as he didn’t inform the nurse about having received the shot once already.
Read: Covid in Bangladesh: Daily toll remains above 200; 15,271 more infected
However, It should not cause any health issues in him, the doctor said.
Meanwhile Civil Surgeon of the district Dr HM Anwarul Islam said there is no scope for the authority to deny their negligence in this incident, as many illiterate general villagers may come to receive vaccines in the centers.
The involved officials have already been warned to not repeat such mistakes, he said.
Bangladesh receives 10 lakh Sinopharm vaccine jabs
Bangladesh on Thursday night received 10 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine as part of commercial purchase from China while 20 lakh more are scheduled to arrive by early Friday.
An aircraft of Bangladesh Biman Airlines landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport carrying 10 lakh doses of Sinopharma vaccine from China around 10:30pm, Dr Shahriar Sazzad, in-charge of the airport health centre, told UNB.
Read: Covid-19: Bangladesh lowers vaccination age to 25
Thirty lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China are supposed to reach Bangladesh on Thursday night and early Friday, sources at the health ministry said.
The vaccine consignments were scheduled to arrive at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in three flights at 10pm, 1am and 3 am, the sources added.
Read: Covid in Bangladesh: Daily toll remains above 200; 15,271 more infected
Earlier, Bangladesh received 20 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine jabs on July 17 and July 18.
The vaccine doses were provided as part of a commercial agreement with China.
30 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine to reach Dhaka Thursday night, Friday
Thirty lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China will reach Bangladesh on Thursday night and early Friday, health ministry sources said.
The consignment of vaccines will arrive at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in three flights at 10pm, 1am and 3 am, added the sources.
Read: Covid-19: Bangladesh lowers vaccination age to 25
Earlier, some 20 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine reached Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in two aircrafts on July 17 and early July 18.
The vaccines were provided as part of a commercial agreement with China.
Read: Covid in Bangladesh: Daily toll remains above 200; 15,271 more infected
Bangladesh seeks US partnership in vaccine production
PM’s Adviser for Private Industry and Investment Salman F Rahman has sought the assistance from the US government to encourage their vaccine-producing companies to partner with capable pharmaceutical companies in Bangladesh.
Recalling the two countries’ close cooperation in combating Covid-19 since the early days of the pandemic, Adviser Rahman stressed scaling up of the global production of the Covid-19 vaccines and other pandemic management equipment to tackle the virus.
He also stated that Bangladesh is ready to make necessary investments for the capacity enhancement of pharmaceutical companies for such partnerships.
Adviser Rahman and Senior Official for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment of the US Department of State Ambassador Marcia Bernicat discussed ways to have stronger collaboration on Covid-19 front.
Bangladesh and the US have expressed willingness to work more closely to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, including partnership, in vaccine production.
Read: Countries like Bangladesh need support for vaccine production: FM
Govt deceiving people over Covid vaccines: BNP
BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir on Wednesday alleged that the government is misleading people by talking about giving them the Covid vaccines at the union level though it could not yet collect adequate doses.
“They (govt) have put people’s lives and their livelihoods at stake with their indifference, incompetence, and failures. They’re now deceiving people with lies and hypocrisies. They could not yet fully collect the vaccines and bring three crore doses from India,” he said.
Speaking at a virtual discussion, the BNP leader said, “But they’re now saying that they'll provide the vaccines at the union level. These are nothing but confusing the nation. This government can spread lies very well.”
Read: Bangladesh to resume vaccination with Astrazeneca jabs soon
Jatiyatabadi Swechchasebak Dal arranged the programme marking the first death anniversary of its former president Shafiul Bari Babu who died of Coronavirus last year.
Fakhrul alleged that the Awami League government has long been plundering public money and resources in the name of tackling Covid pandemic.
"They’re looting the hard-earned money that people pay as tax and the remittances that our expatriates send from abroad and the money that our workers earn working in garment factories. The newspapers are depicting clearly how a reign of looting is going on in the country,” he said.
Read: Vaccination at union level to start on Aug 7: Home Minster
The BNP leader said though unfortunate, it is fact that Awami League characteristically represents a class of ‘looters’. “We saw them looting the same way in 1972-75. They’re continuing the reign of plundering for the last 12 years.”
He said the government has not only destroyed the economy but also the education sector. “A terrorist and partisan woman has been made the principal of an educational institution like Viqarunnisa Noon School and College. The corrupt people are appointed as the vice-chancellors of different universities who are indulging in corruption in the name of appointments.”
Fakhrul said the government has been destroying all the achievements of the country by ruining its business institutions, health and education sectors.He said there is no alternative to waging a strong movement to ‘restore’ democracy and people’s rights by defeating the current ‘monstrous regime’.
Bangladesh to resume vaccination with Astrazeneca jabs soon
Bangladesh will resume vaccination with Astrazeneca jabs soon, said DGHS spokesperson Prof Dr Nazmul Islam on Wednesday.
“We had to stop giving Astrazeneca vaccine to people halfway through due to its short supply. But we’re hopeful of resuming its rollout soon as we’ve received a supply from Japan,” he said during the regular briefing of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
"We’ll get more AstraZeneca supplies within a few days. The wait of those who’re worried about the second dose will hopefully end soon,” he added.
Read: Vaccination at union level to start on Aug 7: Home Minster
Responding to a question on why the vaccination drive with Astrazeneca has not resumed yet, the spokesperson said,” We’re waiting for the arrival of further supplies.”
Bangladesh received the first consignment of 2,45,200 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Japan on July 24.
Read: Age limit to be lowered to 18 for Covid vaccination: Health DG
The vaccine doses came under the COVAX facility.
Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Naoki Ito earlier said Japan would provide a total of 3 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine to Bangladesh.
Tokyo governor urges youth to get vaccinated to slow surge
Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike on Wednesday urged younger people to cooperate with measures to bring down the high number of infections and get vaccinated, saying their activities are key to slowing the surge during the Olympics.
On Tuesday, the Japanese capital reported 2,848 new cases, exceeding its previous record in January.
Read:Bhutan fully vaccinates 90% of eligible adults within a week
Koike noted that the majority of the elderly have been fully vaccinated and infections among them have largely decreased, while the mostly unvaccinated younger people are now dominating the new cases.
“Younger people’s activity holds the key (to slowing the infections), and we need your cooperation,” Koike said. “Please make sure to avoid nonessential outings and observe basic anti-infection measures, and I would like younger people to get vaccinated.”
As of Tuesday, 25.5% of the Japanese population has been fully vaccinated. The percentage of the elderly who are fully vaccinated is 68.2%, or 36 million people.
Vaccination prospects for the younger have improved, and some can get their shots organized by work places and colleges, while others still wait based on seniority. But there are also concerns over hesitancy among the young, with surveys showing many of them having doubts, in part due to fake rumors about side effects.
Read:Tropical storm to bring rain, wind, waves to northeast Japan
Younger people have been blamed for roaming downtown areas after the requested closing hours for eateries and stores and spreading the virus. Tokyo is under its fourth state of emergency, which is to continue through the Olympics, but it mainly focuses on requiring establishments to stop serving alcohol and shorten their hours. Measures for the public are only requests and they are increasingly ignored.
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has also urged people to avoid nonessential outings but says there is no need to consider a suspension of the Games, which are held with no fans in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures — Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama.
Governors of the three areas, alarmed by Tokyo’s surging cases, said on Wednesday they plan to jointly ask Suga to place their prefectures under the state of emergency too.
Read:Olympics ceremony uses music from Japanese video games
Nationwide, Japan reported 5,020 cases in the last 24 hours for a total of 870,445 and 15,129 confirmed deaths.
Japan has kept its cases and deaths lower than many other countries. Its seven-day rolling average of cases is about 3.57 per 100,000 people, compared to 2.76 in India, 17.3 in the United States and 53.1 in Britain, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Sylhet may get nine more Covid vax centres
Authorities plan to set up at least nine more Covid vaccination centres in Sylhet as the city grapples with a devastating second wave of the pandemic.
Sylhet City Corporation has already sent a proposal to the Health Department in this regard and awaiting an approval from the latter, officials told UNB on Wednesday.
Read:Sylhet-3 by-election postponed until Aug 5
The vaccination drive is currently being carried out at Sylhet MAG Osmani Hospital and Divisional Police Lines Hospital in the city. With the proposed centres, the number of vaccination sites in Sylhet will rise to 11.
Md Jahidul Islam Sumon, chief health officer of Sylhet City Corporation, said that such an initiative has been taken to bring dynamism in the vaccination drive amid an alarming surge in Covid-19 cases.
"The Corporation's proposal could be approved by the Health Department by this week," he said, adding that the training of 40 health workers has already been completed for manning these proposed centres.
Read: All will get Covid vaccine shots, reassures PM Hasina
The venues of the proposed vaccination centres are Nagar Bhaban, Matrimangal Hospital, Uttar Par Binodini Nagar Health Center of Dhopadighi, Bagbari Nagar Health Center, Akhalia Biresh Chandra Nagar Health Center, Kadamtali Nagar Health Center, Kazitula Surjer Hasi Clinic, Tilagarh Surjer Hasi Clinic and Shahjalal Upashohor Health Center.
Bhutan fully vaccinates 90% of eligible adults within a week
The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has fully vaccinated 90% of its eligible adult population within just seven days, its health ministry said Tuesday.
The tiny country, wedged between India and China and home to nearly 800,000 people, began giving out second doses on July 20 in a mass drive that has been hailed by UNICEF as “arguably the fastest vaccination campaign to be executed during a pandemic.”
In April, Bhutan grabbed headlines when its government said it had inoculated around the same percentage of eligible adults with the first dose in under two weeks after India donated 550,000 shots of AstraZeneca vaccine.
But the country faced a shortage for months after India, a major supplier of the AstraZeneca shot, halted exports as it scrambled to meet a rising demand at home as infections surged.
Read: Vaccine inequity biggest barrier to ending pandemic: WHO chief
Bhutan was able to restart its drive last week after half a million doses of Moderna vaccine arrived from the United States as a donation under the U.N.-backed COVAX program, an initiative devised to give countries access to coronavirus vaccines regardless of their wealth.
Some 5,000 shots of Pfizer were also facilitated through COVAX, which is co-led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the World Health Organization and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation.
It also received more than 400,000 AstraZeneca shots from Denmark, Croatia and Bulgaria in the last two weeks.
“Our aim is to achieve herd immunity among our population in the shortest possible time to avert a major public health crisis,” Dechen Wangmo, Bhutan’s health minister, told The Associated Press.
Many Western countries with far more resources are yet to vaccinate such a high rate of eligible adults.
Health experts say Bhutan’s small population helped, but the country also benefited from strong and effective messaging from top officials and an established cold chain storage system.
Read: Prof Yunus renews call for ensuring vaccine equality breaking profit wall
More than 3,000 health workers participated and 1,200 vaccination centers across the country helped ensure that shots reached every eligible adult. In some cases, health workers trekked for days through landslides and pouring rain to reach extremely remote villages atop steep mountains to administer doses to those unable to get to a center, said Dr. Sonam Wangchuk, a member of Bhutan’s vaccination task force.
“Vaccination is the pillar of Bhutan’s healthcare initiative,” he said.
Bhutan’s government is also led by medical practitioners. The prime minister, the foreign minister and the health minister are all medical professionals. And frequent messaging from the government, which directly answers questions from the public about the coronavirus and vaccinations on Facebook, also helped combat vaccine hesitancy among citizens.
“In fact, people are quite eager to come and get themselves vaccinated,” Dr. Wangchuk said.
Its prime minister, Lotay Tshering, and monarch, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, were also early advocates of the vaccine, which allayed fears surrounding the rollout. The king also toured the country to raise awareness about the vaccination drive.
Bhutan is the last remaining Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, but it has transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a democratic, constitutional monarchy.
Read: What is a COVID-19 vaccine “breakthrough” case?
Another crucial ingredient in the vaccine drive is the country’s extensive network of citizen volunteers called “desuups,” said Will Parks, the UNICEF representative for Bhutan. Some 22,000 citizens volunteered over the last year and a half to raise awareness, dispel misinformation, help conduct mass screening and testing and even carry vaccines across the country’s difficult terrain, he said.
Bhutan’s success is an anomaly in South Asia where countries such as India and Bangladesh are struggling to ramp up their vaccination rates. Experts say it underscores the importance of richer countries donating vaccines to the developing world and highlights just how big an impact the government and community outreach can have.
“Perhaps this little Himalayan kingdom can be a beacon of hope to a region that is on fire,” Parks said.