Nepal on Thursday received 719,000 doses of Janssen vaccine developed and manufactured by Johnson & Johnson from the COVAX facility.

It is part of 2.17 million doses of Janssen vaccine provided by the German government through COVAX, the United Nations backed international vaccine sharing scheme.

The second consignment of the remaining doses is scheduled to arrive on Friday, the Ministry of Health and Population said.

“We have received 719,000 doses of Janssen vaccine from the COVAX facility,” Dr Surendra Chaurasia, chief of the Logistic Management Section under the Department of Health Services, told the Post. “The second consignment is scheduled to arrive tomorrow [Friday].”

Earlier on Sunday, Germany had supplied 1.96 million doses of Moderna vaccine, through the COVAX facility.

Germany has also supported the procurement of ultra-low temperature freezers, procured through UNICEF, according to a press statement issued by the German embassy in Kathmandu.

The COVAX facility had supplied 1.87 million doses of Covishield on Thursday.

“We can only get over this worldwide pandemic together. Therefore, from the very beginning, Germany has been supporting the multilateral platform ACT-A/COVAX and is today the second biggest donor. We are proud that we can now share more than 4.1 million doses of COVID vaccines with the people of Nepal. With these vaccines more than 10 percent of the population can get fully vaccinated,” said Dr Stephan Russek, Chargé d'Affaires at the German Embassy.

Dr Russek presented the vaccines earlier today to the Minister for Health and Population, Birodh Khatiwada, in the presence of EU representative Stepháne Maicon, UNICEF representative Elke Wisch and WHO representative Dr Vinod Bura.

Nona Deprez, EU-Ambassador to Nepal, congratulated on this consignment. “The European Union is so far the biggest donor of Covid-19 vaccines in the world. EU member states have shared more than 350 million doses with countries around the world. In total, we will secure 700 million doses for sharing by Team Europe by the middle of 2022. I am glad that Germany as part of Team Europe shows Nepal that the best partnerships are when we support each other.”

So far, Nepal has received 29.73 million 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 9.36 million 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.