Nepal’s Covid vaccination coverage has crossed 50 percent as the country inoculated 14.9 million people with both doses as of Thursday, according to the Health Ministry’s statistics.

The ministry’s daily vaccine coverage report shows that with 266,540 people vaccinated in the last 24 hours, the full vaccinated or people having both doses, has reached 51.1 percent.

According to the preliminary census report of the Central Bureau of Statistics, Nepal’s total population stands at 29.19 million.

According to the ministry, until Thursday, a total of 17.3 million people have received at least the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine which is 68.4 percent of the total population.

“This is the collective success of all stakeholders— central, provincial and local level governments, health workers, aid agencies and countries which have provided us the vaccine doses,” said Dr Sangita Mishra, spokesperson for the Health Ministry.

“Due to the strong leadership of the government, which is committed to administer vaccines to all eligible populations at the earliest, we could achieve this milestone.”

The World Health Organization said that Nepal is on track for meeting global vaccination targets set by the World Health Organization.

In May 2021, WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, set three global vaccination targets: 10 percent inoculation of the population of every country by September, 40 percent by the end of 2021, and 70 percent by mid-2022.

Nepal launched the Covid-19 vaccination campaign on January 27, 2021. The government plans to vaccinate the all eligible population by mid-April 2022.