YANGON, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar resumed the vaccination program against COVID-19 across the country on Friday, according to an announcement from the Health and Sports Ministry.

The country started vaccinating about 103,142 frontline medical staff and volunteers since Jan. 27, as the first phase of the nationwide vaccination program, the announcement said.

The group of people who will be given priority to be inoculated starting Friday includes union ministers, deputy ministers and union-level officials, senior government employees, elderly over the age of 65 who are residing in townships under the stay-at-home order, former union ministers, deputy ministers and regional or state government members.

Myanmar received the first batch of 1.5 million doses of Covishield vaccine and 30 million doses of Covishield vaccine will arrive in Myanmar soon, the ministry said.

The Health and Sport Ministry has been arranging to vaccinate about 38.35 million people aged above 18 years within this year.

Myanmar has reported 141,104 COVID-19 cases and 3,163 deaths as of Thursday, the ministry's latest data showed.

COVID-19 was first detected in Myanmar on March 23 last year and over 2.43 million samples have been tested for the virus so far.