President Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday announced the government intends to replace nationwide lockdown measures with a restricted localized response in light of mass vaccinations against the coronavirus.
The responsibility to introduce new restrictive measures is to be delegated to local authorities, the president was quoted as saying by his website.
“These [restrictions] should not be imposed nationwide, like previous times,” the top official added.
For the first time since the pandemic began, a fresh Covid wave has hit Iran after the majority of the population has been vaccinated against the infectious disease.
Driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant, Covid-19 cases have been climbing among Iranians for the past few weeks, especially among children.
So far, only elementary schools in the province of Tehran have been ordered to close and adults over the age of 18 have been encouraged to receive a third booster shot to increase levels of antibody.
During the peak of the previous five waves, the government shuttered schools, universities and high-risk places of businesses, placed a nightly curfew, banned travel to and from red and orange regions and authorized remote working for office employees.
