To continue its fight against coronavirus pandemic, Nepal on Sunday received another shipment of one million doses of Made-in-India covid-19 vaccines.
The Oxford-Astra Zeneca vaccine manufactured in India by Serum Institute of India (SII), under the name Covishield, arrived at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Sunday afternoon.
The vaccines will be stored at the cold storage unit in Teku. This lot of vaccines would be used to inoculate people above 60 years of age, which is 8.73 per cent of Nepal’s population, in the vaccination drive that will begin on March 7.
According to the Nepali Ministry of Health and Population, there are 2,652,258 elderly people above 60 years in the country.
The remaining doses of the vaccines will be obtained according to the agreement with the vaccine producer SII and the timetable proposed by the Department of Health Service, the Ministry of Health and Population said.
On January 15, the Government of Nepal approved the use of Covishield developed by the SII for emergency use.
Nepal began its nationwide inoculation drive after receiving one million Covishield vaccines from the Indian government earlier this year.