London (UK), March 4: The British government will fund what it believes to be the world's first study assessing the effectiveness of a third dose of vaccine to combat COVID-19, the UK Budget revealed on Wednesday.
The government is committing 22 million pounds (30.70 million U.S. dollars) to studies that test the effectiveness of a combination of different COVID-19 vaccines. This will also fund the world's first study assessing the effectiveness of a third dose of vaccine to improve the response against current and future variants of COVID-19, according to the Budget.
It said 28 million pounds (39.07 million dollars) will be invested to increase the country's capacity for vaccine testing, support for clinical trials and improve its ability to rapidly acquire samples of new variants of COVID-19.
The Budget said there will be an extra 1.65 billion pounds (2.30 billion dollars) of cash injection to ensure the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in England continues to be a success.
Britain started its COVID-19 vaccination program in December, and over 20 million people had received at least the first dose of a vaccine by the end of February.
Source: Xinhua