Libya’s Food and Drug Control Centre today announced that it has approved the Sputnik V and AstraZeneca anti-Coronavirus vaccines as suitable for human consumption.

Libyan Prime Minister, Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba, tweeted within the last hour that the first batch of anti-coronavirus vaccines has arrived in Tripoli. The Libyan Health Ministry has reported that the batch consists of 101,252 doses.

The World Health Organization (WHO) in Libya has published a photo on its Twitter account for the US-sanctioned Syrian airliner, Cham Wings, bringing “medical supplies” from its Dubai-based offices to Benghazi in eastern Libya.

Travellers began to cross between Tunisia and Libya again on Saturday after a seven-month border closure due to novel coronavirus restrictions was lifted.

UNICEF and WHO are extremely concerned over severe shortages of critical vaccines in Libya that threaten the health of the country’s children. Over the past 7 months, unprecedented vaccine shortages in the country have disrupted children’s immunization schedules and put them at risk of disease and death.

Libya’s Coronavirus cases reached 60,628 yesterday, the country’s National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reported. This represents a 22 percent increase over the past two weeks., according to the World Health Organization’s Libya office.

Medical bodies in Libya are seeking solutions to limit the fast spread of the coronavirus after the country crossed 40,000 cases.

The governor of the parallel Libyan Central Bank Ali Al-Hibri said he approved a budget of 300 million dinars for the Interim Government of Abdullah Al-Thinni in eastern Libya for anti-coronavirus measures, 284 million of which the government spent in 10 days.

The Education Ministry has postponed the reopening of schools, in response to the advice of the Medical Advisory Committee for confronting Covid-19 to cancel classes set to start next Saturday for several education levels, including the junior certificate stage.

As Libya’s Coronavirus continues to spread at an exponential, and Libya’s authorities fail to control it, Arabian Gulf Oil Company (AGOCO) in eastern Libya and Zawia Oil Refinery in western Libya suspend operations.