The government has decided to provide the second dose of Covishield vaccine only after eight to 12 weeks of the first phase of vaccination – at least four weeks behind the schedule reports The Rising Nepal.

The Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) changed the schedule following the decision of the Vaccine Advisory Committee.

The advisory committee advised the government to reschedule following recommendations from the World Health Organisation’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation to maintain an interval of eight to 12 weeks between the first and second dose of the Covishield vaccine, which is developed by the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, and produced by the Serum Institute of India.

“In light of recent observations, the two-dose efficacy and immunogenicity is said to increases with a longer interdose interval. If the second dose is inadvertently administered less than four weeks after the first, the dose does not need to be repeated," informed the WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunisation (SAGE) reports The Rising Nepal.

“If the duration between the first and the second dose is longer, the vaccine will prove to be more effective. So we recommend eight - 12 weeks interval between the first and second doses,” said Dr. Shyam Raj Upreti, coordinator of the COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Committee at the MoHP daily reports.