Nepal received 664,560 doses of Pfizer vaccines on Friday, donated by the United States through the COVAX facility, the international vaccine sharing scheme backed by the United Nations.

The government is planning to administer the Pfizer-BioNTech jabs to children in 20 districts including those in Kathmandu Valley.

Dr Surendra Chaurasia, chief of the Logistic Management Section under the Department of Health Services confirmed the arrival of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines from COVAX.

US Ambassador to Nepal Randy Berry announced the arrival of the vaccines in a tweet on Friday.

“I’m beyond thrilled that today’s donation of 664,560 Pfizer #vaccines will be rolled out to schools across Nepal. Every vaccine counts – they save lives. And keeping Nepali kids safe & healthy is something we’ll always commit to, as we have for nearly 75 years!” he said in the tweet.

The Health Ministry has been planning to give Pfizer jabs first in the three districts of Kathmandu Valley, and in Kavrepalanchok, Chitwan and Dadeldhura.

The government, from December 19, has been immunising over 1.74 million children aged between 12 and 17 years in 57 districts with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine.

The vaccination drive will continue until December 28.

More children are expected to be immunised with Covid vaccines since the jabs will be administered at schools thus increasing the vaccination coverage.

As schools and other academic institutions have resumed in-person classes, public health experts have warned that schools could be the new epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.

Nepal has also signed a deal with the manufacturers of the Pfizer-BioNtech Covid-19 vaccine to buy 6 million doses of the vaccine. According to officials, the said doses from the US pharma company is expected to arrive within this month.

Nepal so far has received 39,203,927 doses of various Covid-19 vaccines—Vero Cell, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Janssen and Pfizer.

Nepal needs to vaccinate around 78 percent of its over 30 million estimated population, or around 25 million people. Since 4-5 million Nepalis are said to be living abroad, the number of people who need to be vaccinated is estimated to be around 20 million.

As of Thursday, 9,838,376 people (32.4 percent of the total population) have been fully immunised.