300 thousand doses of AstraZeneca vaccines arrives from Japan

KATHMANDU, August 8: Additional 300 thousand doses of AstraZeneca vaccine provided by Japan to Nepal on grant arrived in Kathmandu today. According to the Secretary at the Ministry of Health and Population, Dr Roshan Pokhrel, on Saturday, Nepal had received 500 thousand doses of vaccines from Japan which has announced to gift 1.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine under the COVAX facility.

 The remaining doses of vaccine will be arriving after a week. It may be noted that on Friday, Nepal had received 230 thousand doses of Covishield vaccine from Bhutan. The COVID-19 vaccines received from Japan will be administered to those citizens who have got the first dose of Covishield. 

To date, around 10 million doses of vaccines (gifted and purchased) have arrived in the country. Nepal has bought four million doses of China-manufactured Vero Cell and two million doses of Covishield from India. But, one million doses of vaccine is yet to be supplied from India. Similarly, 1.1 million doses of Covishield have been obtained from India on grant and China has so far gifted 1.8 million doses of Vero Cell to Nepal. 

Likewise, Nepal had received 348 thousand doses of Covishield under the GAVI facility and 1.53 million doses of Janssen & Janssen vaccines from the United States of America in gift. With the regular supplies of vaccines, the government had added COVID-19 vaccination centers. Now the number of such centers stands at 4,422 against 2,989 of the earlier. The Kathmandu Valley alone has 149 vaccinations centers against 83 of the past.