Iran to Receive Second Shipment of Bharat Biotech’s Covid-19 Vaccine

Iran’s Food and Drug Administration announced that a second batch of India’s Bharat Biotech Covid-19 vaccines containing 375,000 jabs is scheduled to arrive in Tehran on Wednesday. 
The second shipment will take the total number of coronavirus shots imported from India to half a million, according to a tweet posted by spokesman for Iran’s FDA, Kianoush Jahanpour, on Tuesday.
Iran aims to immunize 1.2 million people against the contagion before the end of the year on March 20 and to vaccinate another nine million before summer.
Iranian frontline health workers, elderlies and veterans are among the top priority groups to receive coronavirus shots developed by Russia, China, India and Cuba.
The country is expected to accelerate the inoculation drive when it receives AstraZeneca jabs under COVAX, a global program backed by the World Health Organization aiming to secure fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines for poor and middle-income nations.

Travel Ban

Only 40 cities across Iran are under a travel ban due to the Covid-19 pandemic during Norouz (the Iranian New Year holidays) from March 21 to April 2.
“Travel to 91% of cities is allowed during Norouz and only 40 cities color-coded as orange and red are restricted,” the national Traffic Police Chief General Kamal Hadianfar was quoted as saying by IRNA.
The Health Ministry said the color codes announced for every city in the country can be updated during the 13-day holidays to lift restrictions in some regions and impose new ones elsewhere.
The government has introduced a four-tier system to classify regions based on the extent of virus transmissions, starting from low-risk (blue) to mid-risk (yellow) to the highest risk categories (orange and red).
Iran recorded 8,380 freshly identified cases of the novel coronavirus on Tuesday, taking the total number of cases to 1.763 million, spokeswoman of Health Ministry, Sima Sadat Lari, said.
The health official said, “In the past two hours, 97 Covid-19 patients lost their lives, bringing the national death toll to 61,427.”
Over 1.5 million have recovered from the respiratory illness or discharged from hospitals, while some 4,850 are hospitalized in ICU units, in serious condition, Lari said.
“Iran has carried out more than 11.846 million diagnostic tests since the start of the pandemic,” she said.
The worldwide tally of coronavirus cases rose to 120.8 million on Tuesday and fatalities caused by the viral infection reached 2.67 million.