“There are significant regional differences but we are already at more than 179,000 people vaccinated, a quite significant number,” Locatelli said on national television.
In the previous 48 hours, 95,000 people had been vaccinated, he added.
The region where most of the vaccinations have been carried out is Lazio around Rome, according to data from the Italian government.
The total number of vaccines administered in Lazio is 28,134, followed by Tuscany and Veneto.
In Lombardy, where the most COVID-19-related deaths have been recorded, with a total of 25,344 fatalities, only 6973 people have been vaccinated.
Italy’s vaccination program started on December 31 and Locatelli said it was too early to make an assessment of the regional discrepancies, but added that “the gaps must be closed”.
National COVID-19 commissioner, Domenico Arcuri, said the regional discrepancies would soon be eliminated.
Meanwhile, a second batch of 470,000 Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses were expected to arrive at Italy’s many vaccination hubs on Tuesday.
At least 75,680 people in Italy have died from the coronavirus and 2,166,244 have been infected, according to figures compiled by US-based Johns Hopkins University, making it one of the worst-hit countries worldwide.
