Sunday, October 24, 2021

Nepal to get over 100,000 Pfizer vaccines tomorrow

Nepal is receiving as many as 100,620 doses of Pfizer vaccines tomorrow, according to the US Embassy in Kathmandu.

The US embassy in Kathmandu today informed through twitter that the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine -- donated by the United States through COVAX, the international vaccine sharing scheme backed by the United Nations -- will arrive by Monday. "The vaccines are provided by the US to help control the spread of Covid-19 pandemic as well as to accelerate vaccination drive in Nepal," according to the twitter.

The US has already provided 1.53 million doses of J&J vaccines to Nepal in July.

The ministry has decided to provide the vaccines from 22 hospitals throughout the country to the people with compromised immunity.

The Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine will be the fourth vaccine to be used in Nepal. Nepal has so far received AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India, Japan and Europe; Vero Cell vaccine manufactured by Sinopharm of China; and the single-shot Janssen made by Johnson & Johnson in the United States.

This is the first time Nepal is getting Pfizer vaccines. Pfizer-BioNtech, the first mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine, is developed jointly by the US-based Pfizer and the German firm Biontech uses a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce an immune response.

It is said that the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine was 95 per cent effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infection with the coronavirus.

Nepal has received 18,857,590 doses of Vero Cell, AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines till today.

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