By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Nov. 22: The government has started to inoculate Pfizer, a vaccine against COVID-19 to people in the age group of 12 to 17 from today.
Only people suffering from chronic diseases were vaccinated with Pfizer until Saturday. With more Pfizer vaccine in stock, the government has decided to vaccinate healthy children aged between 12 and 17.

The vaccines will be made available at designated vaccine centres of Lalitpur and Kathmandu districts. Due to few doses in availability, vaccines will be provided on a first come first served basis, said Sagar Dahal, Child Health and Immunisation Section, under the Department of Health Services. The remaining doses of vaccine will be administered to around 2,800 children, he added. The vaccine is being administered from 24 different hospitals across the nation.

The Ministry of Health and Population informed that of the total population, 9,120,014 people had received their first dose against COVID-19 and 7,906,369 had received their full dose as of Saturday. In total, 40,014 people were vaccinated in the last 24 hours.

238 new COVID cases with single fatality
The Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) Sunday confirmed 238 new cases of COVID-19. Of them, 232 were detected through PCR tests and 6 through antigen tests.
The nationwide COVID-19 tally through PCR method reached 819,019 and that through antigen tests reached 95,314.
Of the total 9,123 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, 7,845 were Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) while 1,278 were antigen tests, informed the MoHP.

According to the MoHP, the Kathmandu Valley recorded 130 new infections over that period. Of these, 98 cases were confirmed in Kathmandu, eight in Bhaktapur and 24 in Lalitpur. In the past 24 hours, 33 new infections were recorded in Province 1; 12 in Province 2; 142 in Bagmati; 21 in Gandaki; 19 in Lumbini; two in Karnali and two in Sudurpaschim.
According to the MoHP data, Lalitpur

district has more than 500 active cases and ten other districts have more than 200 active cases each. Meanwhile, Okhaldhunga, Manang, Dolpa, Jajarkot and Humla are the districts with zero active case as of today. The active caseload has reached 7,164 on Sunday. Of the active cases, 468 patients are admitted to various health facilities while remaining 6,696 are in home isolation.
As per the latest update, 227 COVID-19 patients are admitted to the Intensive Care Units (ICUs) while 51 are under treatment with ventilator support throughout the nation.

Meanwhile, 370 COVID-19 patients recovered from the infection during that period. Nepal has now recorded 800,359 cases of recovery.
The country also reported one death related to the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 11,496. The recovery rate of COVID-19 has reached 97.7 per cent and death rate is 1.4 per cent, as of today.