Dhaka, Sept. 18 -- Health officials collected the shipment at Dhaka's Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in the early hours of Saturday and sent the vaccines to a cold storage facility.

"A Biman Bangladesh flight arrived with the vaccines around 12:45 am. The vaccines were then taken to Beximco's warehouse in Tongi," said Dr Sazzad Hossain, an airport health officer.

Bangladesh has received more than 24.9 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine so far. The government has agreed to buy 30 million doses of the Chinese vaccine to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The country is also receiving additional Sinopharm doses under the global vaccine-sharing platform COVAX.

The government started a mass vaccination campaign in February, using...