Berlin, Jan 5: A total of 265,986 people have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus in Germany, the country's Robert Koch Institute said.

Among those vaccinated as of Monday were more than 114,600 residents of nursing homes and around 123,100 medical staff, Xinhua news agency.

The country's Covid-19 vaccination program started on December 27, 2020.

"Vaccination paves the way out of the pandemic," Minister of Health Jens Spahn told the German newspaper Rheinische Post on Monday. COVID-19 Vaccination Update: Israel Plans to Provide Coronavirus Vaccine to 2 Million People by January End.

"Step by step, we will be able to vaccinate more people and thus, step by step, get more normality back."

According to the US' Johns Hopkins University, Germany has so far registered 1,796,216 confirmed coronavirus cases, while the death toll stood at 34,969.

The German government has emphasized that vaccines would be in short supply at the beginning and that it was necessary to prioritise.

Citizens over 80 years of age, as well as staff and residents of old people's and nursing homes, are among the first group to get inoculated.

The first 1.3 million vaccine doses were delivered to Germany at the end of 2020.

The government plans to distribute 670,000 vaccine doses every week from this month onwards.

Government spokesperson Steffen Seibert said during a press conference on Monday that the vaccination program was a "joint effort" of the German and federal state governments with the aim of achieving vaccination "as good as possible, as fair as possible and as quick as possible".

Due to high infection numbers and death rates, the European country already entered a national lockdown with strict contact restrictions and closures of bars, restaurants and leisure facilities to last until at least January 10.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and heads of Germany's federal states are scheduled to meet on Tuesday to decide on further steps to curb the spread of Covid-19 in the country.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 05, 2021 02:16 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).