Ljubljana - Some 370,000 doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines so far approved against two sub-lineages of the Omicron variant of coronavirus will be delivered to Slovenia this week, with more shots to arrive by the end of the month, the National Institute for Public Health (NIJZ) told the STA on Tuesday.

First doses of the vaccines engineered to target the BA.1 and Wuhan variants are expected to distributed to vaccination providers next week, NIJZ said, some 70,000 from Moderna, and 300,000 from Pfizer, but only after the companies provide all relevant paperwork.

From 500,000 to 700,000 doses of the adapted vaccines are expected to arrive by the end of this month.

The adapted vaccines have been given the green light by the European Commission last Friday, and previously approved by the European Medicines Agency, who said in August they plan to approve Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines targeting the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of Omicron in autumn.

The BA.4 and BA.5 variants are currently the most wide-spread in many EU countries as well as in Slovenia, while the number of those infected with the BA.1 variant in Slovenia is subsiding.

For now, the existing recommendations of the NIJZ's advisory croup for vaccination against Covid-19 remain in force. A second booster dose is available for all over the age of 18, while it is highly recommended for people with chronic diseases, nursing home residents, and those over the age of 80.

Currently, Slovenia has almost 1,400,000 doses for older strains at its disposal, but the vaccines will expire either in 2022 or 2023.