Health Minister Saeed Namaki said on Monday Iran has set a target of inoculating its 83 million population by the end of the current Iranian year (March 2022).
On the sidelines of a coronavirus taskforce meeting in the eastern city of Mashhad, Namaki noted that Iran is speeding up the vaccine rollout despite slow deliveries, IRNA reported.
“By the end of June, 14 million people, including individuals with rare diseases and those over the age of 60, will have been vaccinated,” he added.
After receiving nearly 2.4 million vaccine jabs this week, Namaki readjusted Iran’s vaccination target, now promising to immunize high-risk people by late June, one month sooner than the previous projection.
Some 389,000 have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 so far and over 2.03 million have received the first shot. The total number of administered doses rose to 2.420 million on Monday.
Iran has also signed a deal with Russia to import 60 million doses of Sputnik V, as it races to manufacture the Russian vaccine Sputnik V inside the country.
Homegrown Vaccine
Phase three of human trials for Iran’s local vaccine, COV Iran Barekat, began on Monday morning with volunteers showing up in centers of the capital city Tehran and Karaj to receive the experimental vaccine.
“By the end of the week, 10,000 volunteers will be injected with the local vaccine,” Hamed Hosseini, the manager of Barekat’s human trials, told ISNA.
“Some 20,000 will participate in phase three from six cities. Considering the tremendous success of the vaccine in the previous two phases, we have already launched mass production.”
According to Hosseini, one million doses of Barekat vaccine are to be delivered to the Health Ministry by the end of the week.
Iran is jointly producing a Covid-19 vaccine with Cuba and several other potential homegrown vaccines are undergoing trials to receive regulatory approval.
Iran’s vaccination process is expected to expedite in the summer when a number of local vaccines will become available to the public.
Daily fatalities dropped to 286 on Monday, from 303 a day earlier, taking the total toll past 77,000. Daily cases surged by 26% compared to the day before, bringing the national tally to 2.765 million.
More than 2.24 million patients have recovered from the infectious disease and 5,200 remain in critical condition and are hospitalized in ICU units.
Worldwide, confirmed cases of the coronavirus increased to 163.7 million on Monday and the death toll reached 3.39 million.
