Nepal on Monday received 100,620 doses of Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine provided by the United States through COVAX, the international vaccine sharing scheme backed by the United Nations.

“100,620 doses of Pfizer vaccine have just arrived in Nepal,” the US Embassy said on Twitter on Monday. “These vaccines have been donated by the US. government to Nepal to fight Covid-19 in partnership with COVAX.”

This is the fourth vaccine to be used in Nepal.

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

“We have just received the vaccines from the United States. The doses will be at the central storage,” Upendra Dhungana, chief of the Logistic Management Section under the Department of Health Services, told the Post .

UNICEF has provided four ultra-cold freezers to store the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine. The four freezers can store over 100,000 doses, according to Bade Babu Thapa, senior pharmacy officer serving at the Section.

According to Thapa, the vaccine can be stored at minus 80 degrees Celsius at the central storage and can be stored in normal temperatures (2 to 8 degree Celsius) for up to 31 days.

However, after mixing the vaccine with diluent, the vaccine can be used for only up to six hours. Each vial of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine contains six doses.

The Health Ministry has decided to provide the jabs from 22 hospitals throughout the country to people with compromised immunity.

“People suffering from renal failure, cancer and heart patients and those having diabetes, who have not received the vaccine will be provided Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 shot,” said Sagar Dahal, chief of National Immunisation Programme. “Due to limited doses of the vaccine offered to us by COVAX, we have decided to vaccinate immunocompromised people.”

He said that all preparations for rolling out the vaccine have been completed.

Pfizer-BioNtech will be the first mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine to be used in Nepal. The vaccine developed jointly by the US-based Pfizer and the German firm BioNtech uses a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce an immune response.

It is said that the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine was 95 percent effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infection with the coronavirus.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was also highly effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 infection in adolescents between 12-15 years old, and the immune response in these adolescents was at least as strong as the immune response in 16-25-year-olds in clinical trials.

“Evidence shows mRNA Covid-19 vaccines offer similar protection in real-world conditions as they have in clinical trial settings—reducing the risk of Covid-19, including severe illness by 90 percent or more, among people who are fully vaccinated,” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website.

The Health Ministry is also preparing to ask the Cabinet for permission to purchase 6 million doses of Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine.

Nepal needs to vaccinate around 78 percent of its 30 million population—or around 25 million people, as per the government’s new plan that includes those aged between 12 and 18 years. The government earlier had planned to vaccinate only those aged 15 years and above.

Since around 4-5 million people are said to be living abroad, the government needs to vaccinate around 19-20 million people. For this, the country needs a little over 40 million doses of double-shot vaccines.

The government has already purchased 10 million doses of the Vero Cell vaccine from China. A deal has been reached with COVAX to purchase 9.9 million doses (5.9 million doses of Vero Cell and 4 million doses of Moderna vaccine) through a cost-sharing mechanism.

So far, Nepal has received 18,958,210 doses of Vero Cell, AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson and pfiZer-BioNTech vaccines.