One million doses of Covishield vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India arrived on Saturday.

Sagar Dahal, chief of the National Immunisation Programme said that the Serum Institute of India delivered 1 million doses of Covishield.

The delivered 1 million doses is part of the 2 million doses of the vaccine for which the government had paid Serum in February.

The government had signed a deal to buy 2 million doses of Covishield, the AstraZeneca type vaccine, at $4 per dose.

Serum had supplied 1 million doses of the vaccine on February 21 and promised to deliver the remaining 1 million doses within 10 days. But after the second wave of infections hit India, authorities there restricted exports of the vaccines, affecting the deliveries to Nepal.

Nepal has so far used AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured in India, Japan and Europe; Vero Cell vaccine developed by Sinopharm of China; and single shot Janssen vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson in the United States of America.