Minister for Health and Population Birodh Khatiwada has said that the procured 10 million doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will arrive from the United States of America soon.
He added that preparations were underway to bring the vaccines for children aged above 12 years. Earlier, US government had provided 120,000 doses of Pfizer vaccines.
These vaccines will be provided to immunocompromised people aged above 12 years suffering from renal failure, taking dialysis treatments, taking medicines after organ transplantation, cancer patients and those suffering from lung disease.
Minister Khatiwada said that his ministry had asked the Ministry of Finance to provide Rs 45 million in allowance to the health workers.
Similarly, 201,600 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine is scheduled to arrive in Kathmandu from Maldives by Saturday. Officials at the Ministry of Health and Population said that the vaccine by Saturday.
The Maldives is supplying its surplus jabs that are about to expire as grant assistance to Nepal.
Earlier, Bhutan had supplied 230,000 doses of surplus AstraZeneca type vaccines. Likewise, Switzerland and Canada have also offered COVID-19 vaccines to Nepal.
Nepal on Wednesday received 1.02 million doses of Vero Cell vaccine purchased through COVAX’s cost-sharing mechanism. The vaccine is part of over 5.9 million Covid-19 vaccine doses the country has purchased using a loan from the Asian Development Bank.
Minister Khatiwada has assured that the government would also bring vaccines for children below 12 years of age, which are currently in trial in the neighboring countries, soon after they become available in China and India.
Nepal has so far has received 19,978,210 doses of Vero Cell, AstraZeneca, Janssen and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. As many as 6,865,665 people (22.6 percent of the total population) have been fully vaccinated as of Thursday, according to the Health Ministry.
