Japan said on Wednesday that it will start shipping the AstraZeneca vaccine doses it has committed to Nepal from Thursday and Friday.

The Japanese government announced on July 13 that it would provide 1.6 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in Japan to Nepal through COVAX, an international vaccine-sharing scheme backed by the United Nations.

“The Japanese-made AstraZeneca vaccine for Nepal is scheduled to be airlifted on August 5 and 6 from Japan to Nepal, expected to arrive in Kathmandu on August 7 and 8 respectively,” the Japanese embassy in Kathmandu said in a statement on Wednesday.

This comes as a great relief for Nepal which has not been able to give second doses to around 1.4 million people who took their first shots of Covishield, the AstraZeneca type vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, in the second week of March.

The vaccine doses, however, will arrive in Nepal in tranches.

“Approximately half of the 1.6 million vaccines Japan has pledged will be delivered to Nepal,” reads the statement. “The latter half of the Japanese-donated vaccines for Nepal will be shipped to Kathmandu in due course, under the arrangements with the relevant organizations.”

Nepal’s vaccination drive has picked up pace lately after vaccine doses started to arrive in the country from different countries.

The Japanese embassy said on Wednesday that Ambassador Kikutaa Yutaka hopes that these Japanese Covid-19 vaccines will be utilised expeditiously for the vaccination campaign, with good coordination by the Ministry of Health and Population of Nepal.

“In this pandemic, the Embassy of Japan has been tackling Covid-19 together with the government of Nepal to save more Nepali people’s lives,” reads the statement. “This vaccination assistance is one of our challenges even in this hardship. Ambassador Kikuta looks forward to working for the post-Covid society and economy of Nepal.”

Nepal so far has received 9.782 million doses of vaccine.

Of the total, 5 million doses were procured by the government–4 million doses of Vero Cell from China and 1 million doses of Covishield from India.

India has provided 1.1 million doses of Covishield under grant assistance.

Over 1.5 million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine arrived from the United States, under COVAX, in Nepal on July 12

China, which has already donated 1.8 million doses of Vero Cell, developed and manufactured by the state-owned Sinopharm, has promised an additional 1.6 million doses to Nepal.

Nepal received 348,000 doses of Covishiled directly through COVAX in the first week of March.

According to the Health Ministry, 4,297,612 people (around 14.32 percent of the total population) have taken their first doses, and 2,074,786 people (6.91 percent of total population) have been fully inoculated as of Wednesday.