1.5 million Moderna vaccines arrive Thursday

KATHMANDU: Nepal, on Thursday, received a consignment of 1.5 million doses of US-made Moderna vaccine to be administered against the novel coronavirus disease. 

As many as 1,497,600 doses of vaccines arrived at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) at 3 PM under the COVAX facility, a United Nations (UN) backed international vaccine sharing scheme. 

According to Bade Babu Thapa, a senior pharmacy officer at the management division under the Department of Health Services, Nepal will further receive additional 1.9 million vaccines under the Gavi, a global Vaccine Alliance and COVAX facility, on Sunday, the next week.  

Nepal had earlier received 188,000 doses of the same vaccine. 

Meanwhile, 600,000 jabs of Covishield vaccines arrived on Wednesday under the COVAX facility. 

With this, Nepal has so far received a total of 29456500 shots of vaccines including Chinese-made Verocell, US-made Jansen, Moderna and Pfizer, Japanese and Swedish-made Astrazeneca and Indian-made Covishield vaccines. 

Thapa added that there is a stock of 6.5 million vaccines across the country as of Thursday.