BUENOS AIRES, May 20 -- Argentina has applied more than 101 million vaccine shots against COVID-19, the Health Ministry said on Friday.

According to the ministry's Public Vaccination Monitor, some 107,697,020 vaccine doses have been distributed around the country, and of those, 101,147,280 have been applied since the onset of the pandemic in the South American country.

To date, 40,762,398 people have received their first shot, while 37,405,047 people have been fully vaccinated and 19,953,595 people have been boosted.

The top health official for Buenos Aires province, Nicolas Kreplak, said Friday the country is undergoing a "fourth wave" of infections driven by a subvariant of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The subvariant is "30 percent more contagious than the one we had in January," but many of the cases have been "mild," so the wave has so far had little impact on hospitalizations and deaths, he said.

As of May 15, Argentina registered 9,135,308 COVID-19 cases and 128,776 related deaths.

  - Xinhua