Additional 300,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine provided by the Government of Japan through the COVAX facility arrived in Kathmandu on Sunday evening.

According to Secretary at the Ministry of Health and Population Roshan Pokhrel, Nepal has so far received 500,000 doses of vaccine from Japan.

Japan government has committed to donate a total of 1.6 million doses of anti-COVID vaccine to Nepal under the COVAX facility. The remaining vaccines will be arriving after a week.

On Friday last week, Nepal had received 230,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine from Bhutan.

The COVID-19 vaccines received from Japan and Bhutan will be administered to those citizens who have received their first dose of India-made Covishield.

Till 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 Covishield, for which Nepal has already paid, is yet to be supplied from India.

Similarly, 1.1 million doses of Covishield have been obtained from India as grant and China has so far gifted 1.8 million doses of Vero Cell to Nepal. Likewise, Nepal had received 348,000 doses of Covishield and 1.53 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine from the United States under the COVAX facility.

With the regular supplies of vaccines, the government has expedited its inoculation drive across country.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), as many as 191,339 people were vaccinated in the past 24 hours. The total number of people who have been vaccinated in Nepal with the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine to date has reached 4,442,622.

Of these, 2,359,793 have received the second dose as well. According to the data of MoHP, more than 153,000 people have been receiving their COVID-19 jabs a day on average.

Similarly, the government has increased the number of COVID-19 vaccination centers across the country. A total of 1,433 new vaccination centers have been added across the country. With this, the total number of vaccination centers has now reached 4,422 against 2,989 earlier.

The Kathmandu Valley alone will have a total of 149 vaccination centers with MoHP deciding to set up an additional 83 vaccination centers.