DUBLIN, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- A total of 230,776 doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in Ireland as of Feb. 5, said the country's Department of Health on Monday.

File Photo: CGTN

Of all the people who have been inoculated, 151,212 people have received their first dose while 79,554 people received their second, said the department in a statement.

Ireland plans to vaccinate 700,000 people by the end of the first quarter, another 1.85 million by the end of June and a further 1.9 million by the end of the third quarter, according to the Irish health minister.

If the plan goes well, the combined number of people who are expected to be vaccinated in Ireland by the time of this fall will account for close to 90 percent of the country's total population, which was estimated at 4.98 million at the end of April 2020, according to a survey of the Irish Central Statistics Office.

Some local news outlets are skeptical about the government plan, as delays have been reported in the delivery of the vaccines either due to production capacity issues or logistics problems.

Annie Lynch (R), the first person to receive the Pfizer BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in Ireland receives her second dose of the vaccine from vaccinator Deborah Cross (L) at St James’s Hospital in Dublin on January 19, 2021. (Photo: AFP)

In Ireland, only frontline workers, people in nursing homes and those aged over 70 are now on the priority list of the government vaccination program. Others in the country have to wait due to the limited supply of vaccines.

On Monday evening, the Irish Department of Health reported another 829 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country, bringing the total to over 200,000. To date, 3,687 people in Ireland have died from the disease.

As the world is struggling to contain the pandemic, vaccination is underway in many countries with the already-authorized coronavirus vaccines.

Meanwhile, 238 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Feb. 2.