Nepal on Friday received 702,720 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s bivalent Covid-19 vaccine from the COVAX facility.

The vaccine doses have been delivered by the French government through the United Nations-backed international vaccine-sharing scheme.

“We received over 700,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s bivalent vaccine on Friday from the COVAX facility,” said Dr Surendra Chaurasia, chief of the management section of the Department of Health Services. “The new supply will help us continue the Covid vaccination programme.”

France donated 685,400 doses of the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine in 2022 and 195,840 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s bivalent vaccine in April 2023.

At present, Nepal has been recording very few positive cases of infection on a daily basis. All preventive measures– including wearing of face masks, and maintaining social distance to slow down the spread of infection have been officially lifted.

With a rapid decline in the spread rate of the coronavirus infection, uptake of the Covid vaccine has also declined significantly. The World Health Organisation too, in May, declared that Covid no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern and this also has made people complacent towards the risks of the infection, according to doctors.

“The UN health body has said that Covid no longer constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, but it does not say one should not take a vaccine against the virus,” said Dr Abhiyan Gautam, chief of the Immunisation Section at the Family Welfare Division, under the Department of Health Services. “The virus isn’t going anywhere, and those who have compromised immunity or have underlying health conditions should get immunised with booster shots.”

The Health Ministry said Covid vaccines are being administered from certain hospitals in the Kathmandu Valley and vaccine doses are being supplied in the districts and local units on demand. Health authorities in the past had requested the COVAX facility to hold the supply for a certain period after they failed to boost the uptake. The request was made to avoid the vaccine doses on hand from going to waste.

Thousands of doses of vaccines from different companies had expired in the past due to low uptake rates. Likewise, tens of thousands of doses went missing. A committee formed by the government to find the missing doses said that as many as 56,908 doses of Covid-19 vaccines supplied to districts and the local levels had in fact gone to “waste.”

The committee found that thousands of doses of vaccines either expired or were damaged due to negligence or poor handling.

The Ministry of Health and Population, meanwhile, said two persons had tested positive for Covid-19 in the past 24 hours. So far 12,031 people have succumbed to Covid in Nepal.