Around 56 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine arrived in Dhaka from China early Tuesday. A Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight carrying 55,93,650 doses of the vaccine landed at Shahjalal International Airport around 2:10 am, said Line Director of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) and Director of vaccination progrmme Dr Shamsul Haq. He said the vaccine doses were procured from China and special arrangements have been made for their preservation. READ: Vaccine sharing: Dhaka wants EU to be more generous China has provided 2.1 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine as a gift to Bangladesh, 3.4 million doses under the COVAX facility, and 8 million doses as part of an arrangement of a large-scale commercial purchase so far. Till now, 13.5 million Sinopharm vaccines have arrived from China. Of them, 1.1 million shots were received under the COVAX facility. Bangladesh is now administering vaccines developed by four companies – AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinopharm. READ: Bangladesh to receive 10 lakh Pfizer vaccine jabs on Aug 30: Minister The government has administered at least 26,129,187 doses of Covid vaccines – enough to have vaccinated around 7.8% of the country's population, assuming every person needs two doses. Bangladesh has administered 9,842,979 shots of Sinopharm as the first dose and 1,837,817 as the second dose so far.

Sinopharm's 1.7 million doses of vaccine under COVAX facility will arrive in Dhaka on Tuesday, said Hualong Yan, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka. He said the vaccine doses are scheduled to arrive at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport around 7pm as the flight carrying those left Beijing at 5:25 am (BST). Read:54 lakh more vaccine doses to arrive by Aug 15: Minister About vaccine coproduction, Hualong Yan said, "We'll be coming soon for vaccine coproduction." Earlier, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said Bangladesh will receive another consignment of 34 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine this week while 60 lakh doses of Pfizer vaccine in September next week. Read: Bangladesh to procure 6 crore Sinopharm vaccine doses: Minister Apart from that, he said, Bangladesh will also receive 10 lakh doses of AstraZeneca soon which is likely to come under the COVAX facility.