<span id="m_-701365059406872566gmail-docs-internal-guid-9bf5a6f2-7fff-fa00-a683-aaa9f5d1a8e0" style="color: #222222;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Bangladesh started a mass COVID 19 vaccination programme on Saturday. The campaign aims to vaccinate about 32 lakh people between August 8-12 across the country. In order to allow a maximum number of people to take advantage of the campaign, the government has allowed people to come to the vaccination centre with their National Identity Document (NID) cards without getting registered in advance on the Surokha app. <br />''<br />''More than 32,700 vaccinators have been deployed across 4600 unions, 1054 municipalities and 433 city wards and 12 city corporations across the country to carry out the drive.<br />''<br />''People above 25 years of age are eligible to take the vaccine during the campaign. Earlier, the government had announced that people above 18 years wil be vaccinated but later it was changed due to logistical and practical reasons. <br />''More than 1 crore people have received the first dose of the COVID 19 vaccine in Bangladesh while 44.43 lakh people have received both the doses. The government has more than 1 crore vaccines in stock as of now. It is expecting to get more supplies from various countries soon. <br />''</span><br />''</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000;">Meanwhile, Bangladesh reported 248 deaths and 12606 new COVID cases on Friday taking the death toll to 22150 and the number of infected people to more than 13.35 lakh. The number of active cases in the country stands at over 1.40 lakh. The sample positivity rate showed a decline on Friday at 26.25 percent from a level of 27.12 percent on Thursday.</span><br />