Daily Covid Cases Scale New High

For the fourth time in the past seven days, the daily tally of coronavirus cases in Iran rose to a new all-time high, with the Health Ministry logging a record 23,000 infections on Monday. 
As the fourth wave of the pandemic overwhelms health facilities, Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi warned that the situation could get worse, ISNA reported.
“We might again experience last autumn’s daily fatalities of 500,” the health official said. “Even the health minister says transmission rates will go beyond red alert.”
Alireza Zali, the head of Tehran’s Coronavirus Headquarters, also expressed concern over the resurgence of the contagious disease and said, “Tehran is officially on red alert. No area in Tehran is clear of the virus and if you ask me, Tehran’s situation is beyond red.”
Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman of Health Ministry, said Monday’s newly-identified cases have taken the national tally to 2.09 million.
“Deaths of a further 274 patients within the past 24 hours took the total toll to 64,764,” she said.
According to Harirchi, nearly 25% of daily deaths in Iran are caused by the coronavirus.

Vaccination Program

Health Minister Saeed Namaki on Monday announced that Iran has finally reached its target of 1.3 million vaccinations with a 20-day delay.
Explaining the slow inoculation drive, Namaki blamed vaccine manufacturing companies for reneging on their agreements to deliver vaccines to Iran. 
“We were supposed to receive 4.5 million vaccines before the start of the new Iranian year, including two million jabs from Russia and 2.5 million doses from other countries,” the minister said. 
Russia’s delivery of Sputnik V dropped to 400,000 shots and the half a million vaccines that were supposed to be shipped from India dwindled to 125,000 doses when the country blocked vaccine exports to prioritize the immunization of its citizens.
Namaki said, “Under COVAX, we were supposed to receive 3.2 million vaccine shots before the end of the year … Some 700,000 jabs finally arrived in Iran a few days ago.”
COVAX is a global initiative, backed by the World Health Organization, which aims to secure fair distribution of Covid-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries.
Iran launched its mass inoculation drive in mid-February and it is expected to ramp up its vaccination drive by the end of spring when its homegrown vaccine reaches mass production.  
Countries around the world have reported a total of 136.7 million confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and over 2.95 million fatalities.