A total of 513,000 people have been vaccinated against the COVID-19, Angola's Health Minister Silvia Lutucuta said Friday.

Lutucuta revealed when the President of the European Council, Charles Michel visited the COVID-19 vaccination center in the Angolan capital Luanda to assess the degree of implementation of the vaccination plan in the country.

"We had the opportunity to share with the President of the European Council the two stages of the vaccination plan and we explained that we started the vaccination on March 2 of this year", Lutucuta said.

The Health Minister said earlier this week that Angola is on the verge of a second wave of the pandemic, taking into account that the country is experiencing a rapid increase in cases, including new variants of the virus.

The minister, who fears a worse scenario than the one registered in October 2020 when the number of daily cases increased rapidly, appealed to the public the need for strict compliance with biosecurity measures to avoid greater damage.

According to her, the most worrying thing is the fact that most cases of the new variants are symptomatic and have affected hundreds of families at the same time.

Lutucuta urged people to change the behavior, stressing that if there is no change, not even the application of the vaccine will save the country from the increase in the number of daily cases.

Angola registered 263 new cases of the COVID-19 on Thursday, making the total tally to 26,431 with 594 deaths.