Govt to sign indemnity agreement with Gavi for 68m vaccine doses

As part of the scrambling to get more doses, Bangladesh will sign an indemnity agreement to get 68 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance), said health officials on Tuesday.

An indemnity agreement is a contract that "holds a business or company harmless" for any burden, loss, or damage. An indemnity agreement also ensures proper compensation is available for such loss or damage.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque held an inter-ministerial on December 24, five days after receiving a letter from the Gavi CEO Seth Berkley.

After the meeting, the ministry wrote to the finance ministry and law and parliament affair ministry seeking opinions about the indemnity agreement and compensation plan. It will send the opinions to the GAVI within January 7, 2020, sources said.

Gavi is a public-private global health partnership with a mission to save lives, reduce poverty, and protect the 92 poor countries against the threat of epidemics.

“We will continue to roll out the vaccines as the available through 2021 and into 2022 in accordance with the allocation formula. We are allocating does as early as February 2021 with initial vaccine delivery shortly thereafter, depending on dose abilities of production of the vaccine," reads Berkley’s letter.

In the first shipment, the GAVI wants to supply doses for 20 percent or 3.4 crore of the total Bangladesh population at $1.6-2 per dose. A total of $290.3 million is required for vaccine and operational cost for the first shipment, according to the health ministry.

On December 16, Bangladesh had agreed to buy doses from Serum Institute of India Serum Institute, which is producing doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Bangladesh will get five million shots each month after the vaccine is approved for mass use and doses are expected to first arrive in January, said the health minister after the agreement.

On November 10, the government released Tk 735.77 crore from the current budget and allocated more Tk 10,000 crore to fight the deadly coronavirus.