Bangladesh’s sluggish COVID-19 vaccination drive received a welcome boost on Tuesday with the arrival of 2.5 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses.

The shipment came from the US under the global vaccine-sharing COVAX initiative, the Health Ministry said, raising Washington’s total donation to Dhaka to 3.6 million.

According to the ministry, Bangladesh has received around 50 million doses of different vaccines, both as gifts and commercial supply, and has administered more than 41 million so far.

Vaccination coverage remains quite low in the country, with around 16 million people – just about 10% of the population – fully vaccinated, according to latest figures.

Daily virus fatalities stood at 31 and new infections were over 1,300 on Tuesday.

A total of 1,310 cases raised Bangladesh’s overall count above 1.55 million, while the death toll now stands at 27,470, according to latest figures.​​​​​​​