As a sign of friendship and strong ties between New Delhi and Kathmandu, India sent the Nepal Army one lakh doses of COVID-19 vaccines on Sunday.
The nine packages of Covishield vaccines, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII), arrived in Kathmandu late at night on an Air India flight.
“Assisting in 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.
Earlier this month, Nepal received 348,000 doses of made-in-India COVID-19 vaccines under the COVAX initiative.
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.
Nepal earlier this year 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 till date has vaccinated about 1.6 million of its citizens and is expected to vaccinate over 70 per cent of the population by end of the year.