BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's Health Ministry on Thursday signed a contract to purchase 20 million doses of Covaxin, the COVID-19 vaccine made by India's Bharat Biotech, for delivery between March and May.

The ministry said in a statement that the deal is worth 1.6 billion reais ($290,000), with the first 8 million doses expected to arrive in March.

Poland will raise the upper age limit for people being given the AstraZeneca vaccine to 69, and will take COVID-19 patients from neighbouring Slovakia, a health ministry spokesman said on Friday.

COVID-19 cases have been surging in central and eastern Europe, but in common with the rest of the European Union the region has faced problems with vaccine deliveries.

Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, is experiencing a large decline in new COVID-19 cases as vaccination rollout continues, local health authorities said Monday.

Winn-Dixie on Thursday announced that it will be expanding its COVID-19 vaccine rollout to include additional Florida counties and two dozen more stores in an effort to “reach even more underserved communities.”.

Canada's COVID-19 vaccination campaign is ramping up after earlier supply disruptions and the number of inoculations last week hit a five-week high, officials said on Thursday.

Navy warships operating in the Mideast have been struck by coronavirus outbreaks, authorities said Friday, with both returning to port in Bahrain.

A dozen troops aboard the USS San Diego, an amphibious transport dock, tested positive for COVID-19, said Cmdr.

In a joint statement on Thursday, India and Pakistan said they would observe a ceasefire.

China is the largest crude oil importer in the world, and its refining capacity is expected to keep growing this decade even as its overall consumption of fossil energy is set to decline.READ MORE: China Needs to Hit Peak Oil Long Before It Reaches Net ZeroIn this case, the private oil refiners are expected to seek an exemption from the government guidance or simply go ahead with maintenance as planned, according to four oil traders familiar with the production schedules and FGE.

Shandong’s advisory isn’t mandatory and “teapots have the freedom to decide when to carry out maintenance based on their profitability,” said Wang Luqing, an analyst at Chinese industry researcher SCI99.Ten private oil refiners in the province, with a combined processing capacity of over 1 million barrels per day, planned to shut all their units for maintenance at some point during the government’s blockout period, with nine of them aiming for outages in the second quarter, according to SCI99.

The Shandong Refining and Petrochemical Industry Association, whose members include about 30 refiners, didn’t respond to phone calls.Rescheduling maintenance in an attempt to curb pollution has previously been implemented for some state-run refiners.

For many of Shandong’s refiners, a maintenance outage is overdue