Nepal on Wednesday received 1,871,000 doses of Covishield from the COVAX.

This is the fourth consignment and part of 6,039,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine committed by the international vaccine sharing scheme backed by the United Nations.

Dr Surendra Chaurasia, chief of the Logistic Management Section under the Department of Health Services, confirmed that 1,871,000 doses of Covishield arrived on Wednesday.

Earlier, on December 8, the COVAX facility had supplied 600,000 doses, on December 1 972,000 doses and before that 725,550 doses on November 29.

So far, Nepal has received 29,018,440 doses of Covid-19 vaccines—-Vero Cell, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

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

The health Ministry said that 9,365,915 people (30.8 percent of the total population) have been fully vaccinated as of Tuesday.

Nepal needs to vaccinate around 78 percent of its over 30 million estimated population, or around 25 million people, as per the government’s new plan that includes vaccinating those aged between 12 and 18 years.

Earlier, the government had planned to vaccinate only those aged 15 years and above.