Amid a surge in new coronavirus cases in the country, the Ministry of Health and Population is preparing to roll out a Covid vaccine across the seven provinces.

Officials said that elderly people, those with compromised immunity, and children between five and 11 years will be jabbed with the monovalent coronavirus vaccine supplied by the COVAX facility last month.

“Most of the provincial health offices have already placed demands for the vaccine,” said Dr Abhiyan Gautam, chief of the Immunisation Section at the Family Welfare Division under the Department of Health Services. “We will start supplying vaccine doses to provinces within a week.”

The monovalent or single component vaccine is designed for the Omicron sub-variant XBB.1.5 of SARS-CoV-2.

Lately, Nepal has witnessed a rise in coronavirus cases.

The World Health Organisation’s report on integrated influenza and other respiratory virus surveillance for week 31 of 2024 shows a SARS-CoV-2 positivity rate of 13.68 percent in Nepal.

Also, the latest data from the National Public Health Laboratory indicates a sharp increase in cases. Of the 5,373 tests conducted since January, 341 came out positive for Covid. The test positivity rate is 6.3 percent, which is concerning, according to experts.

Doctors say that the number of people suffering from fever, sore throat, body aches, and common cold has risen.

The COVAX facility, the United Nations-backed international vaccine-sharing scheme, supplied Nepal with 1.6 million monovalent vaccine doses in the first week of July.

Officials said that around 100,000 children with underlying conditions—cancer, HIV, and others will be administered the vaccine.

Along with these children, pregnant women, people with compromised immunity, those with chronic diseases, and people over the age of 55 have been designated as vulnerable groups, officials said.

Since the end of the second wave of Covid in 2021, health authorities across Nepal have stopped active case finding, including contact tracing and free testing. Hospitals now only conduct tests for those seeking polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for travel abroad or for seriously ill patients with respiratory conditions.

Multiple doctors the Post spoke with said that the circulation of coronavirus has never stopped and is unlikely to stop in the near future.

Infectious disease experts and virologists urge the public to take precautions to protect the elderly and people with comorbidities from the deadly virus.

They warn that even if most people may not show severe symptoms from Covid infection, the elderly and people with underlying conditions remain at high risk.

“We saw elderly people requiring intensive care during the previous surge in April,” said Dr Sher Bahadur Pun, chief of the Clinical Research Unit at the Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital. “It’s time to return to the basics—washing hands, wearing face masks, avoiding crowds—to save at-risk groups like the elderly and those with underlying conditions.”

Over 12,000 people died, and hundreds of thousands were infected in the first, second and third waves of the Covid pandemic.

Meanwhile, the National Public Health Laboratory said that an Omicron sub-variant of the coronavirus is responsible for the surge in new infections of late. According to the latest update issued by the laboratory, the Omicron variant has been found in all 42 swab samples in the whole genome sequencing.

Whole-genome sequencing is a comprehensive method of analysing the entire DNA sequence of an organism’s genes. Researchers believe this approach could be instrumental in tracking the virus’s severity and properties.

This time, however, the laboratory has not provided information about the specific Omicron sub-variant.