RIGA, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- With immunization against COVID-19 gathering pace in Latvia, Health Minister Daniels Pavluts warned on Wednesday that the Baltic country may run out of vaccines by the end of January.

Pavluts told reporters that the speed of vaccinations, which in recent weeks had been unacceptably slow, had improved in the past couple of days. As of Wednesday, said the minister, 9,899 medics had been immunized as a priority group.

He indicated that, according to the vaccination plan, Latvia is going to immunize around 30,000 medics in the first couple of months of this year.

After medical workers, COVID-19 vaccines will be given to residents and staff of nursing homes, the elderly and people with underlying health conditions before they are made available to the general public.

Pavluts warned that Latvia will soon have used up all the available vaccine supplies, which can lead to a break in the immunization campaign at the end of January.

To date, Latvia has received 30,225 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and 1,200 doses of the Moderna vaccine. Another 2,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine are due to arrive on Jan. 25. That amount is sufficient to inoculate around 17,000 medics in January.

Meanwhile, according to information released Tuesday by the World Health Organization, 236 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States. Enditem

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