As India surges, Bangladesh lacks jabs, faces virus variants

Dhaka, Bangladesh: India's surge in coronavirus cases is having a dangerous effect on neighboring Bangladesh. Health experts warn of imminent vaccine shortages just as the country should be stepping up its vaccination drive, and as more contagious virus variants are beginning to be detected.

On Saturday, health authorities said that for the first time, a coronavirus variant originally identified in India was detected in Bangladesh, without providing further details. For weeks, South African variants have dominated the samples sequenced in Bangladesh. There are concerns that these versions spread more easily and that first-generation vaccines could be less effective against them. Experts say that declining infections in Bangladesh over the last two weeks compared to March and early April - for reasons that aren't fully understood - provided the perfect opportunity for the nation to scale up vaccinations.