Nepal receives 800K doses of Covid vax from China

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Kathmandu, March 29 (IANS) A day after the Nepal Army received 100,000 doses of Covid vaccine from their Indian counterparts as a goodwill gesture, 800,000 doses donated by China arrived in Kathmandu on Monday.

Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi handed over the vaccine shipment to Nepal's Health Minister Hrydesh Tripathi at a function at the Tribhuvan International Airport.

On Sunday evening, the Nepal Army received 100,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccines, developed by Oxford-AstraZeneca and locally manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.

"100,000 doses of #MadeInIndia Covid-19 vaccine gifted by Indian Army to the Nepali Army were received at Tribhuvan Airport today," the Embassy of India tweeted on Sunday evening.

The vaccine provided on Sunday will only be administered to the Nepalese Army personnel.

At a time when Nepal is struggling to continue its inoculation drive against Covid as cases have started to surge across the country, the Covishield vaccine will provide some relief, said officials.

Since India halted the export of Covid vaccine, Nepal was also hit hard by the temporary sanction.

The Chinese vaccine that Nepal has received is developed China's Beijing Institute of Biological Products Co. Ltd, under Sinopharm.

Nepal has already granted emergency use authorization of the Sinopharm vaccine but the World Health Organization has not approved it.

Nepal had sent a flight os its national flag carrier to Beijing to transport the Chinese vaccine while India has been delivering the Covid vaccine by its own airplane.

Earlier, India provided 1 million doses of the vaccine to Nepal as a gift.

Later, Nepal procured another one million doses of Covid vaccine from Serum Institute at a discounted rate.

--IANS

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