More than 1.5 billion doses of anti-COVID vaccines have been injected into people's arms around the world, six months after the vaccination drive started, according to an AFP count.

By Tuesday at 15:30 GMT at least 1,500,017,337 doses had been injected in 210 countries or territories, according to the tally based on official sources.

Nearly three fifths of the total have been administered in three countries: China (421.9 million), the United States (274.4 million) and India (184.4 million).

In terms of population, Israel is leading the pack: Nearly six Israelis out of 10 have already been completely vaccinated with two shots. The United Kingdom follows, with 54 per cent of its population having already received at least one dose, then Bahrain with 50 per cent), the United States (48 per cent), Chile (47 per cent) and Uruguay (40 per cent).

In the 27-nation European Union more than 200 million doses have been administered to 32 per cent of the population. Of the bloc’s biggest countries Germany has given one dose to 37 per cent of the population, France to 31 per cent, Italy to 32 per cent and Spain 33 per cent.

While the world’s half billionth dose took four months to achieve, coming on March 25, it took less than a month to double the total, then just over another three weeks to get to the figure of 1.5 billion.

Eleven countries are not yet vaccinating. Six of them are in Africa: Burkina Faso, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea and Tanzania. The others are in Oceania (Vanuatu and Kiribati), North Korea and Turkmenistan in Asia and Haiti in the Caribbean.