Opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Friday called on the president and the prime minister to take COVID-19 vaccine first to make people confident about the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Party senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi said that heads of different countries and heads of their governments had taken the vaccine first to instill confidences in people.

While speaking at a press conference at the party’s Naya Paltan central office, he also urged the president and the prime minister to follow their instances and to take brave decisions like them.

The BNP made the call after the government received 20 lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccine from India on Thursday.

The government announced that the vaccination programme would begin in the first week of February.

Citing health minister Zahid Malek, who said that prime minister Sheikh Hasina would inaugurate the vaccination programme, Rizvi hoped that the prime minster would take the vaccine first and television channels would telecast the programme directly.

He said that unless the prime minister took the vaccine, people would think that they were being used for the trial and testing of the vaccine.

When the ministers, the members of the parliament and the upper class people enjoyed all the government facilities first, why then that practice was changed in the case of the vaccine, Rizvi questioned.