Bahrain will suspend dine-in services at restaurants and cafes and move public and private schools to remote learning for three weeks to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the health ministry said.
It said it had detected a new variant of coronavirus in a number of cases, without specifying which kind.
The new lockdown measures will come into effect on Sunday.
There has been an uptick in coronavirus cases in the Gulf kingdom since December. The country registered 459 new cases on Wednesday, adding to a total of nearly 100,000 since the start of the pandemic, with 370 deaths.
The small island state has the third highest rate of vaccinations per capita in the world so far, according to the Our World in Data website, which is run by an Oxford University research programme.
Bahrain offers its citizens either the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine or one manufactured by Chinese state-backed pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm free of charge.
The kingdom also approved the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on Monday for emergency use.
Israeli troops will remain in the buffer zones they have created in Gaza even after any settlement to end the war, the country's Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday, as efforts to revive a ceasefire agreement faltered.
French jails were hit by a second wave of attacks overnight, including three cars set alight at Tarascon prison in southern France, the Justice Minister and a prison workers' union said on Wednesday, as authorities sought to identify those responsible.
Gaza has become a "mass grave" for Palestinians and those trying to help them, medical charity MSF said on Wednesday, as medics said the Israeli military killed at least 13 in the north of the enclave and continued to demolish homes in Rafah in the south.
UNICEF has projected that its 2026 budget will shrink by at least 20 per cent compared to 2024, a spokesperson for the UN children's agency said on Tuesday, after US President Donald Trump slashed global humanitarian aid.
US President Donald Trump threatened to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status on Tuesday and said the university should apologise, a day after it rejected what it called unlawful demands to overhaul academic programmes or lose federal grants.