BEIJING, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

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BEIJING -- More than 9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in China, said Zeng Yixin, deputy head of the National Health Commission, at a press conference on Saturday.

Starting Dec. 15, China officially launched the COVID-19 vaccination program for this winter-spring period targeting a number of key groups, including those engaged in handling imported cold-chain products, customs officers, medical workers and people working in public transport and fresh markets.

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NEW DELHI -- India's COVID-19 tally rose to 10,431,639 on Saturday as 18,222 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours, said the latest data from the federal health ministry.

According to the data, the death toll mounted to 150,798 with 228 new deaths.

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WASHINGTON -- A U.S. health official said on Friday that the storming of Capitol by a largely maskless crowd earlier this week in the middle of a surging COVID-19 pandemic will have "public health consequences."

"I do think you have to anticipate that this is another surge event. You had largely unmasked individuals in a non-distanced fashion, who were all through the Capitol," U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told McClatchy news organization in an interview.

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ULAN BATOR -- A total of 13 more locally transmitted cases of COVID-19 were reported across Mongolia in the last 24 hours, the country's National Center for Communicable Diseases (NCCD) said Saturday.

"We conducted 13,773 tests for COVID-19 yesterday, and 13 of them were positive," Amarjargal Ambaselmaa, head of the NCCD's surveillance department, said at a press conference.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the country has rose to 1,408 with 896 recoveries so far.