The World Bank, which has committed funds for vaccines, has advised the Nepal government to also procure vaccines available on payment from COVAX. The WHO’s second window is providing vaccines that are available for those countries which can afford to pay. 

Nepal should not wait for free vaccines and should immediately reserve them by paying, Faris Hadad-Zervos, World Bank’s country director for Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, was quoted as saying by The Kathmandu Post. 

So far, the country has received 1 million doses of Covishield, the AstraZeneca type vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, and 1.8 million doses of Vero Cell, developed and manufactured by China’s Sinopharm, under grant assistance.

Besides that, the Serum Institute supplied 1 million doses of Covishield for which Nepal paid. COVAX, the international vaccine sharing scheme backed by the United Nations, had also supplied 348,000 doses of Covishield.

2.61 million people have got their first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine; Of them, just 933,868 have received both doses. Only 3 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated so far.

Over 4000 people lost their lives in the second wave and the threat of the third wave is already looming large. 

(SAM)