India, depending on the scale of production of vaccines within the country, is aiming at July-end or August to at least release those vaccines that have been bought by Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal and are now in pending status, reported The Print on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Vikram Kumar Doraiswami had an “informal meeting” with State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam on Wednesday at his office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
However, neither side revealed what they discussed.
Bangladesh entered into a deal with the Serum Institute of India (SII) to purchase 30 million doses of a potential vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca for Covid-19.
Bangladesh was supposed to get five million doses of vaccine per month as the SII and Bangladesh’s Beximco Pharma signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for priority delivery of the vaccine doses.
Bangladesh sought at least 3 million doses of vaccine under the agreement to address the immediate demand in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has so far received only 7 million of Oxford-AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine doses produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) through its contract. Bangladesh also received 3.3 million doses of vaccine as a bilateral partnership gift.