The People’s Liberation Army of China has provided 300,000 doses of Vero Cell vaccine to the Nepal Army.

The doses were handed over to Chief of Army Staff General Prabhu Ram Sharma by Chinese ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi amid a programme at the Army headquarters on Monday.

“We received 300,000 doses of Vero Cell vaccine from the Chinese Army,” Brigadier General Santosh Ballave Poudyal, spokesperson for the Nepali Army, told the Post. “We will use the jabs to the army personnel, who have not been vaccinated yet and provide the second dose to those who have already taken the first dose of Vero Cell. The vaccine will also be administered to the dependents of army personnel.”

Earlier in March, the Indian Army had provided 100,000 doses of Covishield, the AstraZeneca type vaccine, to the Nepal Army. The jabs were used by the Army on its personnel and their dependents.

The vaccines from China to the Nepal Army arrived on Monday days after Beijing supplied 1.6 million doses of Vero Cell to Nepal under grant assistance.

China in the past has provided 800,000 doses and 1 million doses of Vero Cell Vaccine separately. Also, the Chinese Red Cross has provided 100,000 doses of Vero Cell to the Nepal Red Cross Society.

So far, the northern neighbour has provided 3.8 million doses of Vero cell Vaccine under grant assistance.

China has also pledged to provide additional 3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine including 1 million doses of Sinovac vaccine under grant assistance.

Nepal has purchased 10 million doses of Vero cell vaccine through a non-disclosure agreement from China.

Separately, the government has purchased over 5.9 million doses of the vaccine through COVAX’s cost-sharing mechanism. Of this, COVAX last week supplied 1.02 million doses of Vero Cell vaccine. The vaccine was purchased using a loan from the Asian Development Bank.

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

Nepal launched its Covid-19 vaccination campaign on January 27 with 1 million doses of Covishield.

Altogether, the country has received 22,079,810 doses of Covid-19 vaccines–Vero Cell, AstraZeneca, Janssen and Pfizer-BioNTech. 

The United States on October 25 supplied 100,620 doses of Pfizer vaccine to Nepal. The vaccines were provided under the US commitment to COVAX. The Nepal government, however, has not used the Pfizer vaccine yet.