Bangladesh’s Beximco could sell AstraZeneca vaccine by next month

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Bangladesh’s Beximco Pharmaceuticals will purchase up to three million doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine from Serum Institute of India at about $8 each on the market on the private industry, Beximco’s chief operating officer told Reuters news company.

The COO, Rabbur Reza, said that was about twice the price of around $4 that Beximco had agreed for separate materials of five million doses per month, over the first half of the entire year, for the Bangladeshi government’s subsidised mass-vaccination programme.

Serum Institute will start deliveries of the shot in the future this month, both those for express and private work with, Reza told Reuters media on Tuesday. The vaccine is normally administered in two independent doses per patient, commonly with weeks between them.

The delivery of the shots to India’s eastern neighbour, the world’s eighth-most populous country with an increase of than 160 million people, comes as India tries to meet global require for vaccines and bolster its reputation as a pharmaceutical powerhouse.

Individual sales of the vaccine by Beximco could start in Bangladesh the following month, and at a retail price around 1,125 taka ($13.27) per dose, Reza said. Currently, the company has a offer for just one million doses that may be raised by another two million, he added.

The rates and package details have not been previously reported.

Beximco, among Bangladesh’s biggest pharmaceutical corporations, is the exclusive distributor of the AstraZeneca vaccine found in the country.

Reza said Beximco had also had preliminary discussions with other Indian vaccine coders such as for example Biological E and Bharat Biotech, whose shot was approved this month by India while a back up to the one produced by AstraZeneca with Oxford University.

“As of this moment, our spouse is Serum and we'll continue with them, that’s our target,” the COO said found in a phone interview. “If the government wants more vaccines, we are able to discuss other vaccines as well that Serum is focusing on - if the federal government wants something other than the AstraZeneca one.”

Serum Institute, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, plans to market 100 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for 200 rupees ($2.73) each to the Indian authorities, and will fee slightly higher for subsequent buys. India has already bought 11 million doses at that initial fee.
Serum wants to offer the shot for 1,000 rupees ($13.66) a dose on the individual market, whenever that's allowed by New Delhi.

Though Beximco is initially paying out $4 per dose for the vaccine for the Bangladeshi government programme, the purchase price will sooner or later be altered to around the common rate the Indian government would pay Serum, Reza said.

Serum is bearing the cost of transporting the vaccines to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka from India.

Reza said Beximco gets the option to get additional volumes from Serum for the state vaccination programme compared to the currently agreed 30 million doses for the united states, which has reported a lot more than 523,000 COVID-19 cases and 7,800 deaths.

As a low-income country, Bangladesh will also bypass 68 million doses of vaccines - possibly including the one produced by Pfizer Inc with spouse BioNTech SE - at a subsidised price from global vaccine alliances.

Serum features partnered with Uk drugmaker AstraZeneca, the Gates Foundation and the Gavi vaccine alliance to create more than a billion doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for poorer countries.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com

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