The first doses of the Covid-19 vaccine adapted to the Omicron variant have been delivered to Lithuania, the Health Ministry reports.
The first shipment to reach the country on September 6 contained 51,840 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, Julijanas Galisanskis of the Health Ministry said, adding that the remaining 100,000 doses should be delivered next week.
The ministry also said that additional 10,700 doses of the Moderna vaccine adapted to the Omicron variant should be delivered to Lithuania in September in several shipments.
On September 1, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) approved Covid-19 vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna adapted for the Omicron variant, paving the way for a booster campaign this winter.
The so-called “bivalent” jabs target both the original virus that emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in 2019 and the BA.1 subvariant of Omicron, the agency said.
The vaccines are not updated for the newer and more infectious BA.4 and BA.5 types that have become dominant worldwide, with a decision on a jab to counter those variants expected within weeks. (LRT/Business World Magazine)