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4.01pm BST

Fresh Covid-19 vaccine supplies are accelerating inoculations in Oman, which has had the slowest rollout in the Gulf due to procurement difficulties, a government health official said, as a surge in cases puts hospitals under pressure.

“The situation is now changing, we are regularly now receiving stocks of vaccine […] the campaign again has started,” Zahir Ghassan al-Abri, of the General Directorate of Primary Health Care at Oman’s Ministry of Health, told Reuters.

3.50pm BST

Russia’s government on Friday blamed the country’s low uptake of Covid-19 vaccinations on “nihilism”, Reuters reports:

Five months into the campaign, and a growing battery of threats as well as incentives, by June 2 only 18 million Russians had received at least one dose of vaccine.

Vaccinations are even available in department stores. But at just one-eighth of the population, that figure, the most recent available, is far lower than in most Western countries.

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Source: The Guardian