By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Sept.15: More than 4 million doses of Vero Cell vaccines against COVID-19 will arrive in Nepal by Saturday from China. The government is planning to inoculate people aged above 18 years from various districts.
Dr. Bibek Kumar Lal, Director at the Family Welfare Division, under the Department of Health Services, said that 4.4 million doses of the China-made vaccine would arrive in Kathmandu from China on Saturday.  
The government has planned to vaccinate all people aged above 18 years by covering many districts across the nation, said Dr. Lal.

Nepal had purchased 10 million Vero Cell vaccines from China. Among them, it had received 4 million doses in June under a non-disclosure agreement. Nepal then purchased 6 million doses, of which 1.6 million doses arrived on August 19. The 4.4 million doses, which will arrive by Saturday, are a part of consignment of the purchased 6 million doses.

The Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) informed that 5,877,079 people had received their first dose of the vaccine against COVID-19 and that 5,243,236 had received their full dose as of today.
In total, 88,184 people were vaccinated in the last 24 hours. These days, the government is administering Covishield (manufactured by Serum Institute of India), Japanese-made AstraZeneca and Swedish AstraZeneca vaccines.
1,562 new virus cases, 1,589 recoveries
The MoHP on Tuesday confirmed 1,180 new cases of COVID-19 through PCR tests and 382 through antigen tests. The nationwide COVID-19 tally through PCR method reached 779,492 and that through antigen reached 87,413.
Of the total 14,443 tests conducted in the last 24 hours, 10,266 were Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) while 4,177 were antigen tests, informed the MoHP.
According to the MoHP, Kathmandu Valley recorded 404 new infections over that period. Of these, 294 cases were confirmed in Kathmandu, 62 in Lalitpur and 48 in Bhaktapur.
According to the MoHP data, 12 districts, including Morang, Jhapa, Sunsari, Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, Lalitpur, Chitwan, Makawanpur, have more than 500 active cases each and 20 other districts have more than 200 active cases each.

The active caseload reached 26,202 on Tuesday. Of the active cases, 1,512 patients are admitted to various health facilities while the remaining 24,690 are in home isolation.
As per the latest update, 453 COVID-19 patients are admitted to the Intensive Care Units (ICUs) while 137 are under treatment with ventilator support throughout the nation.
Meanwhile, 1,589 COVID-19 patients recovered from the infection during that period. Nepal has now recorded 742,306 cases of recovery.
The country also reported 19 deaths related to the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 10,984. The recovery rate of COVID-19 has reached 95.2 per cent, with active case standing at 3.36 per cent and death rate at 1.4 per cent, as of today.