By: Swati Rana
THE government will sign an agreement with South Korea to set up an international institute for vaccine production, including for Covid-19, Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina announced on Wednesday (16).
She told parliament that “issues relating to ratification, accession, and approval of the agreement by the cabinet are under process”.
“Government-to-government (G2G) negotiations are underway with the countries that have developed vaccines for transferring technology,” she added.
She said the capacity of three firms – Incepta Pharmaceuticals, Popular Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Pharmaceuticals – have already been assessed over the production of Covid-19 vaccines.
The vaccine developed by Bangladeshi firm Globe Biotech is now in a trial stage.
Bangladesh has so far approved the emergency use of five vaccines – Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm (China), Sputnik-V (Russia), Pfizer-BioNTech (USA/Germany) and CronaVac (China).