Brasilia, Jun 19 (IANS): The Brazilian government broke its daily record for vaccination against Covid-19, after accelerating its immunisation pace in recent days, the Ministry of Health said on Friday.

In a statement on Friday, the Ministry said a new vaccination record was set on Thursday when 2,561,553 vaccine doses were administered in 24 hours, reports Xinhua news agency.

So far, Brazil has administered 84.1 million doses, with 60.06 million people receiving their first dose and 24.03 million their second.

The federal government has distributed about 109.29 million vaccine doses to states and municipalities, Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga said.

The South American country began its immunisation drive in January using the CoronaVac vaccine from the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac.

Brazil later added the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

So far, the country has registered a total of 17,702,630 Covid-19 cases and 496,004 deaths.

The caseload is the third highest in the world after the US and India, while the death toll is the second largest after the US.