President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has congratulated the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Indian Government for its landmark program to vaccinate the country's vast population against COVID-19.

The world's largest democracy bega began the world's largest inoculation drive on Saturday and a sanitation worker received the first vaccine.

Prime Minister Modi launched the program, which aims to vaccinate more than 1.3 billion people against COVID.

India has recorded the second-highest number of Covid-19 infections in the world after the United States.

Millions of doses of two approved vaccines - Covishield and Covaxin - were shipped across the country in the days leading up to the start of the drive.

Congratulating the neighboring country on this major undertaking, President Solih said that he is highly confident that India would be successful in this endeavor and that the world is now seeing an end to the COVID-19 scourge.

Recent media reports have speculated that the Maldives would receive its first batch of vaccine by the end of this month, although no official confirmation of these reports have yet been made.