China has provided half a million COVID vaccines to Sri Lanka to assist the country in its battle against the coronavirus.

Sri Lanka had been facing a shortage of coronavirus vaccines amid the vaccine shortage in India due to the high infection rate.

China had provided the earlier round of half a million vaccines in March. The second round of vaccines arrived at Colombo on Wednesday.

The AstraZeneca's vaccine produced in India by Serum Institute known as CoviShield is not available in India and an Indian court has ruled on the vaccine to not be exported outside India, this has caused a shortage of COVID vaccines in South Asia including the countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, and Srilanka.

Sri Lanka has also decided to buy more than 140 million doses of Coronavirus vaccines from a Chinese Pharmaceutical, SinoFarm.

In Sri Lanka, the number of confirmed cases of covid infection has reached more than 174,000, and 1,298 people have died. The number of infected people in Sri Lanka in the last 24 hours is 1,782.