How Dhaka received India’s vaccines since China wanted it to share the costs of the trial.
Key sentence:
- Bangladesh switched to India to deliver the Covishield jab from the Serum Institute of India (SII).
- India sent a present to Dhaka of two million doses of Covishield vaccine and encouraged a commercial agreement with the Pune-based SII of 30 million doses.
- In October 2020, the Chinese needed to sign a deal with Sheikh Hasina’s government to import CoronaVac vaccines.
Amid questions about the efficacy of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine, Bangladesh switched to India to deliver the Covishield jab from the Serum Institute of India (SII) since Beijing brazenly requested Dhaka to share the expense of clinical trials of the drug developed by Sinovac in the SAARC region.
India gifts Dhaka 2 million shots of Covishield Vaccine:
On January 21, India sent a present to Dhaka of two million doses of Covishield vaccine in sharp contrast. It encouraged a commercial agreement with the Pune-based SII of 30 million doses.
During the virtual meeting of December 17, 2020, the Indian gifts to Dhaka supported the assurance provided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The two countries have cooperated in the field of the Covid-19 vaccine, including Phase III research, supply, co-production, and distribution in Bangladesh.
The demand for Indian vaccine:
The leadership of Sri Lanka and Nepal also shared their apprehension to their Indian partners about the Chinese vaccine. Demand for the Indian vaccine came from small countries far and large, including Barbados, whose Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley, writes to PM Modi on January 22 to provide 200,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, providing for half of the shots to be purchased. It has accepted the submission.
The Chinese wanted to sign a contract with the Sheikh Hasina government:
About October 2020, the Chinese needed to sign a deal with Sheikh Hasina’s government to import CoronaVac vaccines, as per diplomats based in Dhaka and Delhi.
One of the deal’s conditions was that the cost of the clinical studies had to be borne by Dhaka. Although Dhaka declined to share the trials’ costs, the Chinese company claimed that Bangladesh could not be an exception to not sharing costs because Sinovac, as a precursor to jab supplies, placed the same requirements on the countries wherein clinical trials were performed.
3 million doses of commercial supplies have already landed in Dhaka:
It was only when Dhaka moved rapidly and joined up with the Modi government with SII to promote the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine’s commercial production through 30 million shots.
Dhaka has already received three million doses of industrial supplies. In seven neighbouring countries, India already has carried out five million doses of the coronavirus vaccines; the first was Bhutan on January 20 and the last being Mauritius on January 22.
