Nepal starts inoculating teenagers with anti-COVID vaccines

Nepal has started inoculating its teenage population with anti-COVID vaccines. On Monday, those between 12 and below 18 years stood in line to get jabbed as the government rolled the US donated Pfizer vaccine for teenagers or adolescents.

Hundreds of students studying in secondary and higher secondary levels of schools stood in line sun-basking waiting for their turn to be inoculated overcrowding vaccination centres across Nepal. "At first I was very scared with COVID-19 but now I am feeling secure," Palisha Tuladhar, a secondary level student toldafter being jabbed.

With surplus vaccines on the stock which fits the vulnerable population of the nation, the government decided to vaccinate healthy children aged between 12 and 17 from Sunday.

"In earlier days, I always laid my focus on inoculating my son rather than myself. For being a child with different physical abilities, they cannot express or tell their problems. Jabs were more important for them rather than us, though it came late but came right on time and he could be inoculated, till now we tried our best to keep him out of contagion and didn't send him to school though it reopened," Binju Paudel, mother of a child with different ability told ANI.

According to Nepal's Health Ministry, a total of 7364 people with chronic illness has been inoculated with the vaccine since November 12 when it was first rolled out. With two to three weeks still to go for a second dose to those inoculated in the first round, the government without prior notice called on students to take the jabs.

Earlier in October, Nepal had received 100,620 doses of the US donated Pfizer vaccine manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech. In the three days inoculation drive, the government is planning to inoculate up to 46,000 people with the vaccine which is proved to be safe for teenagers too.

Nepal plans to inoculate around 78 per cent of its 30 million population for which it needs about 40 million doses of double shot vaccines by early 2022. Nepal so far has received 23,163,930 doses of Covid-19 vaccines-Vero Cell, AstraZeneca, Janssen and Pfizer-BioNTech.

( With inputs from ANI )

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