Iran to Vaccinate Elderly Against Covid-19 by July

Iran plans to vaccinate its elderly population against the coronavirus by late July in the second phase of its Covid-19 inoculation drive, spokesman for the National Coronavirus Headquarters, Alireza Raeisi, said on Tuesday.
“Roughly eight million people are 65 years of age and older across the country who will be immunized in the second round,” Raeisi was quoted as saying by ISNA.
According to the details of the national vaccination plan, those in the 16-64 age group with underlying health conditions are the next priority group in the second phase.
Iran has so far received vaccine shots from Russia and China, and is administering vaccines to frontline health workers as the top priority group.
Vaccination is expected to pick up pace in Iran after local vaccines reach mass production. The country’s strong health infrastructure has the capacity to vaccinate 20 million people a month.
Iran identified nearly 8,500 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, 784 of whom were admitted to hospitals across the country, Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman of Health Ministry, said.
“The new infections took the total tally of cases to 1.648 million,” she added.
Overnight fatalities plummeted on Tuesday with the Health Ministry recording 86 deaths, compared to 108 reported a day earlier, bringing the national toll to 60,260.
Lari said more than 1.4 million have recovered from the respiratory disease and some 3,700 are hospitalized in ICU units.
“Iran has carried out 10.97 million diagnostic tests to identify infections since the start of the pandemic,” the health official said.
At least 11 cities are classified as high-risk zones on red alert, all located in the western province of Khuzestan, where a mutated and highly contagious strain of the coronavirus, first identified in Britain, has spread throughout the region.
Covid-19 cases around the world increased to 115 million on Tuesday and the death toll reached 2.55 million.