The government is going to vaccinate people with Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine in Dhaka's three vaccination centres from today.

The vaccine jabs will be administered at Sheikh Russel Gastro Liver Institute and Hospital, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and Kurmitola General Hospital, said Dr Md Shamsul Haque, line director at the Directorate General of Health Services.

A total of 120 people will be given vaccine shots today at each centre, he said.

They will be observed for 10 days and if there is no adverse effect, then the vaccine jabs will be administered at the mass level, he added.

On May 31, Bangladesh received 106,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine. The jabs will be administered at three vaccination centres in the capital as those need to be kept at a very low temperature in storages that are not available outside the capital.

The Directorate General of Drug Administration approved the emergency use of Pfizer vaccine on May 27.

Meanwhile, the government has started administering Chinese Sinopharm vaccine across the country.

The government had launched the nationwide mass vaccination campaign on February 7 with a target of vaccinating all citizens aged 18 and above in phases.

But the authorities halted administering the first dose of vaccine on April 26 due to a shortage of jabs. More than a week later, the administration of the second dose was also suspended at all centres across the country.

The inoculation campaign stumbled after Serum Institute of India failed to provide Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine amid a surge in virus deaths and cases in that country.

As per an agreement, Bangladesh was supposed to receive three crore shots of the vaccine from Serum in six months.

Serum delivered 50 lakh doses in the first consignment in January, but shipped only 20 lakh shots the following month. The country has not received any shipment from the company since then.