Iran Launches Phase Two of Mass Inoculation Campaign

EghtesadOnline: Iran is set to resume its mass vaccination program on Tuesday to immunize 100,000 more healthcare personnel against the Covid-19 pandemic.

News ID: ۷۸۶۰۸۹

23 February 2021

Health Minister Saeed Namaki announced on Monday that after a short gap, Iran will continue with the vaccination of frontline health workers with the Russian-developed Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, IRNA reported.

“Then we’ll turn our attention to nursing homes. We’re hopeful we can abide by our commitment to vaccinate vulnerable groups before the end of the year,” the minister said.

Iran has set a target of 1.3 million vaccinations by the end of the year, relying especially on COVAX’s promise to deliver 4.2 million shots of AstraZeneca before the end of February.

Only 220,000 shots of Russia’s Sputnik V have arrived in Iran so far, out of the 2 million doses that are scheduled to be gradually delivered.

The Health Ministry is also expecting Pasteur Institute of Iran’s jointly-produced vaccine with Cuba to become available to the public by late April.

The third and final phase of clinical trials for the vaccine will begin this month and thousands of volunteers are to be injected with the experimental vaccine both in Iran and Cuba.

China Vaccine Donation

China will deliver its sizable donation of 250,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine to Iran some time during the next week, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told IRNA.

“The Chinese government has donated 250,000 shots of Sinopharm to Iran and they are ready to be transferred,” he said.

The official pointed out that the exact date of the flight carrying the vaccines to the country will be announced later.

“Iran’s Food and Drug Administration has authorized the conditional and emergency use of Sinopharm,” FDA spokesman, Kianoush Jahanpour, said in a tweet.

Iran logged 8,260 fresh cases of the novel coronavirus on Monday, pushing the national tally past 1.582 million, spokeswoman for the Health Ministry, Sima Sadat Lari, said.

“Over the past 24 hours, 89 Covid-19 patients lost their lives, bringing the total death toll to 59,572,” she added.

In the past 10 days, 327 contracted the virus and three to four died from it every hour, data gathered by the Health Ministry showed.

Lari said 1.35 million have recovered from the respiratory illness and 3,685 remain in critical condition.

“Iran has administered 10.5 million PCR tests since the start of the outbreak,” she said.

Over 112 million around the world have tested positive for Covid-19 and 2.47 million of them have died from the infectious disease.