As a mark of friendship and strong ties between New Delhi and Kathmandu, India sent one lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccines for the Nepal Army on Sunday.
The nine packages of Covishield vaccines, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India(SII) arrived in Kathmandu, via an Air India flight late in the evening.
“Assisting in the fight against Covid-19 pandemic, one lakh doses of vaccine for Nepal Army being provided by Indian Army has arrived in Kathmandu today. Its formal handover is scheduled to take place in a few days,” Santosh Ballav Paudel, spokesperson for Nepal Army tweeted on Sunday evening.
Under this initiative, the Covax facility will deliver 1.92 million vaccine doses to Nepal by the end of May this year in support of the Nepal government’s nation-wide vaccination campaign.
Earlier this month, Nepal received 348,000 doses of made-in-India Covid-19 vaccines under the Covax initiative.
Nepal received one million doses of Covishield vaccine from India under grant assistance. In the last two months, Nepal also has procured two million doses of made-in-India vaccine out of which one million is yet to be delivered.
With procured vaccine and that on grant assistance, Nepal to date has vaccinated about 1.6 million of its citizens and is expected to vaccinate over 70 percent of the population by end of the year.
