Nepal received 1,497,600 doses of the Moderna vaccine from the COVAX facility on Thursday. According to the Ministry of Health and Population, the vaccine will be administered to children between 12 to 17 years of age in 57 districts from December 20.
The vaccines will be administered to children at their schools, informed Sagar Dahal, chief of National Immunization Program.
As per Ministry officials, the estimated population of children between 12 and 17 years is around 3.5 million, but the target group of the existing Moderna vaccines is only 1.8 million children.
The fresh batch of vaccines is the second consignment and part of the 3,712,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine committed by COVAX facility. Earlier on December 4, Nepal had received 188,400 doses of the Moderna vaccine as the first consignment through COVAX.
Likewise, as many as 1,965,600 doses of the vaccine is scheduled to arrive on Sunday as the third consignment.
Nepal so far has received 27,147,440 doses of anti-COVID vaccines — Vero Cell, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna from various countries. As of Thursday, 9,058,582 people (29.8 percent of the total population) have been fully vaccinated.
