Iran Covid Deaths Surpass 60,000

Deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic in Iran crossed the 60,000 threshold on Sunday after a one-year battle with the viral infection.
"Over the past 24 hours, 93 new Covid-19 patients lost their lives, taking the national death toll to 60,073," spokeswoman for the Health Ministry, Sima Sadat Lari, was quoted as saying by ISNA.
The official reported over 8,000 freshly identified infections on Sunday, pushing the total case tally past 1.63 million.
Data collected by the Health Ministry showed that over the past 10 days, 338 tested positive for Covid-19 and three to four patients died from the contagion every hour.
Iran is currently vaccinating its frontline health workers and nursing-home residents against the deadly virus to reduce its death rate.
“We’re not concerned over the speed of inoculation in the country,” Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raeisi said. “We have the capacity for 15-20 million vaccinations per month.”
According to Raeisi, Iran’s strong health infrastructure guarantees a short inoculation campaign after local and international vaccines are made available to the public.
Iran has so far received China’s Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccines and will soon be delivered 4.2 million shots of AstraZeneca purchased through COVAX, a global initiative that attempts to ensure the fair distribution of vaccines in the world.
Over 1.39 million have recovered from the respiratory illness and some 3,700 remain in serious condition, Lari said.
"Iran has carried out more than 10.85 million diagnostic tests since the start of the outbreak," she added.
At least 114.4 million have contracted the infectious disease across the world, which has claimed the lives of 2.54 million.