Largest Shipment of Vaccine Arrives

EghtesadOnline: Iran’s largest shipment of Covid vaccines was delivered to the country on Friday as part of a ramped-up vaccination effort to curb the recent surge in cases and deaths.

News ID: ۷۸۶۹۳۶

04 September 2021

“Today five million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine arrived in the country,” Reza Zabib, foreign ministry director-general for the East, posted on twitter.

Iran has finalized an agreement with Beijing to bring in five million doses of Sinopharm on a weekly basis for at least the next two months.

Delayed shipments of AstraZeneca jabs are also being delivered to the Health Ministry which will boost the national vaccination campaign this week.

On Thursday morning, a batch of 1.499 million AstraZeneca jabs were imported into the country under COVAX, the global vaccine-sharing program, an official with the Customs, Mehrdad Jamali Arvanaqi, said.

Iran is set to receive a total of 16.8 million AstraZeneca vaccines through the scheme.

So far, some 19.2 million Iranians have been given a first dose of a Covid vaccine and 9.4 million people have been fully vaccinated, bringing the total number of shots administered to 28.6 million.

Iran only gave out 216,000 shots in the last 24 hours as it faced a shortage of vaccine before the two shipments arrived on the weekend.