Saudi Arabia's food and drug administration has approved the COVID vaccine made by AstraZeneca, state TV reported on Thursday.

Health authorities will begin administering the vaccine across the country, reported state-run Saudi Press Agency.

The approval was given based on data shared by the manufacturers, but the SFDA will additionally analyse samples from each incoming vaccine shipment before using it.

Other GCC countries including the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain have already approved the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine too.

In addition to the PFizer-BioNtech vaccine, Saudi has also approved the use of Moderna.

In January, the kingdom said that it would reschedule the appointments for those who registered to receive their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, due to "the delay of the producing company in supplying the vaccine to the kingdom."

Saudi Arabia has reported a total of 374,029 infections since the start of the pandemic, including 327 new cases on February 18. Overall, 6,450 people have died as a result of the virus and 365,017 have since recovered from it.

(With input from agencies)