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New Covid strain: Schools shut, dine-in services suspended in Bahrain

Dubai - The health ministry had said it has detected a new variant of coronavirus, without saying which kind.

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Bahrain will suspend dine-in services in restaurants and cafes and will move public and private schools to remote learning for three weeks to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

The ministry has detected a new variant of coronavirus, it said, without saying which kind. The decisions will come into effect on Sunday.

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There has been an uptick in coronavirus cases in the Gulf kingdom since December. The country registered 459 new cases on Wednesday, adding to a total of nearly 100,000 since the start of the pandemic, with 370 deaths.

The small island state has the third highest rate of vaccinations per capita in the world so far, according to the Our World in Data website, which is run by an Oxford University research programme.

Bahrain offers its citizens either the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine or one manufactured by Chinese state-backed pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm free of charge.

The kingdom also approved the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Monday for emergency use.

• coronavirus
• Bahrain