Iran to Reach 500,000 Daily Vaccinations in Coming Days

EghtesadOnline: Health Minister Saeed Namaki on Monday evening said Iran will be able to administer half a million vaccine shots a day in the near future.

News ID: ۷۸۶۴۶۲

19 May 2021

Vaccinations will go from the current 150,000 per day to 300,000-400,000 and could even reach half a million vaccines per day in “future days”, Namaki was quoted as saying by ISNA.

“We’ll vaccinate the target group by late June, that is, people over the age of 60 and individuals suffering from rare diseases,” the top health official said.

Iran is stepping up vaccine rollout as it receives more of its delayed shipments of the jabs under COVAX, a global initiative aiming to secure fair distribution of vaccines around the world.

COVAX delivered to Tehran 1.452 million shots of Italian-manufactured AstraZeneca jabs on Sunday night, taking the total number of vaccines given by the global organization to 2.23 million, out of the 16.8 million COVAX has agreed to send.

Namaki said, “Starting June, homegrown vaccines will be used in the national vaccination campaign.”

One of Iran’s local vaccines, dubbed COVIran Barekat, is being produced in large volumes even before phase three of human trials concludes.

Over 407,000 Iranians have taken both shots of a Covid-19 vaccine and 2.163 million have received the first dose, bringing the total number of administered shots to 2.571 million.

According to the Food and Drug Administration of Iran, the country has received a total of 5.6 million Covid-19 vaccines from Russia, China, India, Italy and South Korea.

Drive-In Vaccination

Tehran’s coronavirus taskforce is cooperating with the capital’s municipality to set up more drive-in vaccination centers in parks after the success of the first two centers.

Head of Tehran’s coronavirus taskforce, Alireza Zali, said, “Drive-through vaccination centers are a successful model. Yesterday, 500 people were inoculated in 70 minutes.”

The number of centers are expected to rise after receiving positive feedback from those who were injected with the Covid-19 vaccine from the safety of their cars.

Zali noted that people over the age of 75 are being immunized against the respiratory illness in the centers as well as clinics and hospitals. According to the Health Ministry’s estimates, all age groups will be inoculated by March 2022.

The Health Ministry logged 13,900 new Covid-19 infections on Tuesday, pushing the national tally to 2.779 million.

Overnight fatalities remained above the 300 mark on Tuesday, with the ministry registering 310 deaths, taking the total toll to 77,532.

The number of coronavirus cases around the world rose to 164.3 million on Tuesday and fatalities caused by the disease reached 3.4 million.