Manama: Bahrain has extended the intervals between the first and second dose of the Covishield-AstraZeneca vaccine from four to eight weeks, official news agency BNA reported.
This comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the longer dose durations between eight to 12 weeks are related to greater vaccine effectiveness, the Ministry of Health’s Undersecretary for Public Health Dr. Mariam Al-Hajeri said.
The vaccine was approved for emergency use for vulnerable groups, including the elderly and people with chronic diseases, in the Kingdom since Jan. 25.
The vaccine was produced by AstraZeneca, a British–Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company, in collaboration with the University of Oxford. It is manufactured by the Serum Institute of India under the local name ‘Covishield’.
