18 July 2021, Kathmandu
The government is preparing to bring 3.2 million doses of vaccines against coronavirus by July 30 from China.
According to Assistant Spokesperson at the Ministry of Health and Population Dr Samir Kumar Adhikari, wide body aircrafts of Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) are scheduled to regularly ship the Vero Cell vaccine procured from China in four flights.
He said that the shipment process has already started adding that a wide body plane of NAC is scheduled to fly to China on July 21.
Earlier, the NAC plane brought the vaccine from China on July 9. Likewise, the Ministry said that the second doses of Covishield would be administered soon to the senior citizens who have already received the first dose of Covishield.
He added that the Covishield vaccines would be received soon and all the senior citizens waiting for the second dose would be administered soon.
The senior citizens would get the second dose of Covishield vaccine after getting it from the government of Japan.
Japan has already announced to provide 1.6 million doses of vaccines to Nepal through COVAX.
Various countries have pledged to provide COVID-19 vaccines for 6 million population of the country through the COVAX facility.
Under this facility, countries including India, China, the United States of America and Japan have provided the vaccines.
On July 12, the US provided 1,534,850 Janssen & Janssen vaccines to Nepal in grant.
Earlier, Nepal received 348,000 Covishield vaccines provided by India. Likewise, the government of Japan has pledged to provide 1.6 million AstraZeneca vaccines to Nepal.
So far, Nepal has received 6,582,850 COVID-19 vaccines. Additional vaccines were coming in through the facility, said Dr Jhalak Sharma Gautam, chief of the child health and immunisation section under the Department of Health Services.
So far in the country, 2,765,709 populations have been administered first dose of the vaccine and 1120,282 second dose.
The government aims to administer the vaccine to the total 22 million populations above the age of 18 for free.
