People leaving the Capital to celebrate the Tihar festival in their home towns and districts will be administered Covid-19 vaccines at bus parks, officials said.

The move by the Ministry of Health and Population aims to vaccinate those who have not taken the Covid-19 jabs yet due to various reasons.

Sagar Dahal, chief of the National Immunisation Programme, told the Post that they have completed all the preparations for administering the jabs from the bus parks.

The Health Ministry said that immunisation booths will be set up at Gongabu (New Bus Park), Koteshwar, Kalanki and at Samakhushi micro stands, among other locations.

The vaccination campaign will be organised on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Dahal. “We will provide both AstraZeneca and Vero Cell vaccines from the bus parks,” he said.

The capital city is still a hotspot for coronavirus infections as there are over 2,000 active cases in the three districts of the Valley—Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur.

According to the Health Ministry, there were 1,018 active cases in Kathmandu, 517 in Bhaktapur and 538 in Lalitpur on Monday.

In the last 24 hours, 228 people tested positive in Kathmandu Valley—162 in Kathmandu, 50 in Lalitpur and 16 in Bhaktapur.

On Monday, 533 people tested positive for Covid-19 across the country. Among the 7,468 polymerase chain reaction tests performed, 441 returned positive results. In 4,196 antigen tests, 92 people tested positive. In the last 24 hours, nine people died from complications related to coronavirus infections. Active cases stand at 9,319 throughout the country.

Doctors say active cases could be far more than the number provided by the Health Ministry, as the number of tests has been declining for a long time and only those who get seriously ill from the infection or those seeking negative polymerase chain reaction reports seek tests.

“Those going home from coronavirus hotspots could take the infection to remote villages,” said Dr Baburam Marasini, former director at the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division. “Decision to administer the vaccine from the bus parks is a positive thing, which should be continued even after Tihar.”

The number of people returning home for Tihar is expected to be less compared to Dashian, the country’s biggest festival.

So far 7,253,285 people (23.9 percent of the total population) have been fully vaccinated.

Nepal launched its Covid-19 vaccination campaign on January 27 with the 1 million doses of Covishield, the AstraZeneca type vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India.

Altogether, the country has received 20,179,810 doses of Vero Cell, AstraZeneca, Janssen and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

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

Since around 4 to 5 million people are estimated 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.