Iran to Purchase 18m Doses of Covid-19 Vaccine

EghtesadOnline: Iran plans to procure 18 million doses of a Covid-19 vaccine from one of the three international manufacturers who have so far reported their product to be highly effective against the infectious disease, Health Minister Saeed Namaki said on Monday.

News ID: ۷۵۱۵۷۲

25 November 2020

“We are going to negotiate to buy 18 million doses. We have talked with other sources to purchase some from other companies as well,” Namaki was quoted as saying by IRNA.

Each individual will need two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to build immunity against the contagion, meaning the Health Ministry’s purchase deal could protect 11% of the country’s population.

That is one of the three ways that the minister is going to pursue vaccination against the novel coronavirus, as daily coronavirus infections have neared 14,000.

“We will talk to two or three countries for a joint production agreement to use their scientific data,” he said, adding that he is also optimistic about the four Iranian firms with vaccines in the pipeline.

“We are hopeful that two of them will receive approval on Wednesday to conduct human trials and the start of trials in a few days.”

If the local companies receive authorization, they can launch phase one of clinical trials and inject humans with the vaccine.

Daily Corona Cases Break Record

The daily number of coronavirus infections has set yet another record on Tuesday with 13,700 new cases, taking the national tally to 880,000, the spokeswoman for the Health Ministry, Sima Sadat Lari, was quoted as saying by ISNA.

“The deaths of an additional 483 Covid-19 patients have brought the total toll to 45,738,” she added.

Over the past 24 hours, movements on a highway linking Tehran to northern provinces have dropped by 90%, the head of Tehran Coronavirus Taskforce, Alireza Zali, told IRNA.

To tackle a third wave of infections, the government has imposed travel restrictions to and from cities with high virus transmission rates for an extendable duration of two weeks.

According to Zali, movements in the capital during the day have decreased by 59% during daytime and by 70% during the 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew.

Some 5,800 coronavirus patients are in critical condition and over 617,000 have recovered from the infectious disease, Lari said.

She noted that Iran has administered 5.87 million PCR tests to diagnose Covid-19.

Global coronavirus cases jumped to 59.6 million on Tuesday and the death toll crossed 1.4 million.