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DUBAI, LONDON: Bahraini authorities have authorized the use of a booster dose of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, the first time the Russian shot has been approved for a third dose, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said on Saturday.
The booster shot was approved for use among all over-18s at least six months after receiving their second dose of the Sputnik V vaccine, the news agency reported.
Bahrain and the UAE have already approved third booster shots using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The small island nation’s COVID-19 infections are decreasing, currently at 3 percent of their peak with 95 new infections reported on average each day.
There have been 272,709 infections and 1,388 coronavirus-related deaths reported in Bahrain, which has a population of roughly 1.7 million according to the World Bank.
So far nearly 2.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, enough to inoculate about 76 percent of the population, assuming each person needs two doses.
Meanwhile, Britain reported 37,578 new cases of COVID-19, government data showed on Saturday, meaning cases reported between Aug. 29 and Sept. 4 were up 2.4 percent compared with the previous seven days.
One of the UK’s largest suppliers of seasonal influenza vaccines has warned that there could be delivery delays of up to two weeks as a result of a shortage of truck drivers.
In a statement that has accentuated concerns about the potential scale of this winter’s flu outbreak, vaccine company Seqirus blamed “unforeseen challenges linked with road freight delays” for the disruption to deliveries in England and Wales.
The company said it “is working hard to resolve the delay to allow customers to reschedule their influenza vaccination clinics.”
Though the severity of flu outbreaks vary each year, there are concerns that past lockdowns put in place to combat the coronavirus pandemic might make UK residents more susceptible to the flu in the coming months.