Call for Sea Border Control to Detect Coronavirus Variant

Health Minister Saeed Namaki on Monday urged the close monitoring of sea borders over fears of the highly contagious South African and Indian variants of the coronavirus entering the country.
“The Indian and South African variants can easily slip into the country, sea borders need to be monitored and ship crews need to be carefully tested,” Namaki was quoted as saying by ISNA.

The World Health Organization has classified the Indian and African mutations as variants of concern (VOC) and scientists are researching if coronavirus vaccines developed so far are effective against the new variants.

Namaki said, “The Indian and South African mutations have spread in small regions in the country, we’re supervising the situation 24/7 so another fire doesn’t break out.”

For now, the British variant of the coronavirus is the dominant strain across Iran, it entered the country through western provinces and triggered the fourth wave of the pandemic.

Private Sector’s 1st Covid Vaccine

The fist coronavirus vaccine manufactured by the private sector obtained regulatory approval on Monday to launch phase one of human trials, Iran’s Food and Drug Administration announced.

The vaccine, dubbed SpikoGen, is Iran’s fifth homegrown vaccine to get the greenlight for human testing, the FDA’s spokesman, Kianoush Jahanpour, said in a tweet.

“After conducting the phase and three of human trials for SpikoGen, the vaccine will be mass-produced by CinnaGen Co. with an output of nearly four million jabs a month,” Jahanpour wrote.

Over 460,000 people have been fully vaccinated against the contagion in Iran and 2.068 million have received the first shot of a vaccine. Iran has administered 3.069 million vaccine doses in the over three months since it began its inoculation campaign.
The country is planning to immunize 14 million high-risk individuals against the virus by late June.

Daily Covid infections soared by over 37% to 11,000 on Monday, taking the total number of cases to 2.843 million. Some 1,600 of the new patients were required admission to hospital.

The Health Ministry recorded 251 fatalities on the same day, bringing the national toll to 78,848.

Countries around the world have reported a total of 167.5 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 3.47 million deaths, but the World Health Organization estimates that the actual figures can be two to three times higher.