Bangladesh’s Beximco Signs New COVID Vaccine Deal With India’s SII to Ensure Priority Access | Read Here

"The investment amount will be treated as an advance and once the vaccine receives regulatory approvals, SII will include Bangladesh among the countries who will be the first to receive an agreed quantity of this vaccine from SII on a priority basis," the news agency quoted Beximco as saying in a statement.

New Delhi: As health experts across the world are busy developing a COVID-19 vaccine, Bangladesh’s Beximco announced that it will invest in the Serum Institute of India (SII) to ensure that it gets priority access to Coronavirus vaccines, a report by Reuters said on Sunday.

“The investment amount will be treated as an advance and once the vaccine receives regulatory approvals, SII will include Bangladesh among the countries who will be the first to receive an agreed quantity of this vaccine from SII on a priority basis,” the news agency quoted Beximco as saying in a statement.

No details regarding the size of the investment were immediately available.

The heads of both companies, in a joint statement, asserted, “This landmark agreement reflects the deep-rooted desire for collaboration between the two countries and as representatives of the two nations, between us we can go a long way towards helping to mitigate the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

This deal come days after Bangladesh Health Minister Zahid Maleque announced that his country has given a nod to a late-stage trial of a potential Coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd, hoping to get priority vaccine access here too.

Prior to signing a deal with Beximco, SII had partnered with AstraZeneca, the Gates Foundation and the Gavi vaccine alliance to produce over a billion doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 case tally in the country reached 35,42,734, with 78,761 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours. The total tally includes 7,65,302 active cases, 27,13,934 cured/discharged/migrated & 63,498 deaths.

As of Saturday, Bangladesh recorded over 2,131 new COVID-19 cases and 32 new deaths, pushing the total tally to 308,925 while deaths to 4,206.