ABUJA, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria has so far gone halfway through vaccinating its population against COVID-19, an official said on Tuesday.
"The country has fully vaccinated half of the total population eligible for COVID-19 vaccination," Faisal Shuaib, head of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), which coordinates vaccination in the country, told reporters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
According to the latest update of NPHCDA, as of Monday, authorities in the most populous African country have fully vaccinated 57,386,857 persons, representing 51.3 percent of the total population targeted for COVID-19 vaccination.
However, the vaccination coverage is still far below the government's target of fully vaccinating 70 percent of its eligible population by December 2022, Shuaib said.
Some 13.2 percent of fully vaccinated persons in Nigeria have received the COVID-19 booster dose for additional protection against the virus, he said.
Shuaib said the country has sustained a decline in the number of new cases of COVID-19 and a sustained decline in the importation of infection of COVID-19 from other countries over the past six months. No new infection has been recorded since November 20.
