The count of COVID-19 vaccine doses given worldwide has reached 4.40 billion on Saturday, according to Our World In Data, a tracking website affiliated with the University of Oxford.

The available data on the website shows that China, where the coronavirus first emerged in late 2019, leads the global count with over 1.76 billion vaccine jabs.

India comes second with more than 501 million jabs, followed by the US with over 349 million. Brazil has administered more than 149.47 million shots.

Japan, Germany, the UK, and France are following each other as they have delivered over 99.6 million, 94.2 million, 86 million, and 76.4 million jabs, respectively.

Turkey ranks ninth on the list with over 75.7 million doses applied so far. More than 41.6 million people in Turkey have received at least one vaccine shot whereas the count of those getting both jabs has reached 28.6 million.

As COVID-19 vaccines are generally given in two separate doses per person, the count of administered vaccines does not mean that the same number of people have been vaccinated.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed more than 4.2 million lives across the world, with an excess of 201.8 million cases reported, according to the US' Johns Hopkins University./aa