By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Jan. 30: The government has started to administer booster shot of COVID-19 to senior citizens above 60 years of age.
According to the Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP), those who have completed six months after receiving both doses of vaccines will be provided with booster dose.
The MoHP has decided to provide the AstraZeneca vaccine as a second dose and booster due to shortages of the Vero Cell vaccine.

The decision to administer AstraZeneca vaccine as second dose and booster in place of Vero Cell was in line with the recommendation of the World Health Organisation’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, according to Dr. Sameer Kumar Adhikari, assistant spokesperson at the MoHP.

A meeting of the National Immunization Advisory Committee held earlier on Wednesday had also recommended alternative vaccine for second dose and booster shot.
Issuing a press statement, Laxmi Marasini Acharya, senior nursing officer at the Family Welfare Division under the Department of Health Services, said, “As per the recommendation of the World Health Organisation’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization and the National Immunization Advisory Committee, a ministerial level decision was taken on Friday to administer AstraZeneca as the second dose.”

As per the decision, Covishield/AstraZeneca vaccine will be administered as a booster to those above 60, who were inoculated with Covishield/AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech or Vero Cell vaccines in a primary series, said Acharya.
Likewise, Covishield/AstraZeneca vaccine can be administered as a second dose if authorities lack the vaccine that was taken as first dose.

The MoHP has also decided to administer Covishield/AstraZeneca vaccine to those who were inoculated with Covishield/AstraZeneca, Vero Cell, Moderna and Pfizer vaccine abroad, she added.
According to the MoHP, the government has so far received 42,049,640 doses of vaccines, including the AstraZeneca, Vero Cell, Moderna, Janssen and Pfizer.

The government started inoculating booster shots against COVID-19 on January 4 this year, after the new highly contagious Omicron variant spread across the nation. More than 300,000 frontliners have received the booster shot so far.