Covid Cases Hit 5 Million Mark

Nearly 18 months into the Covid-19 pandemic, Iran’s tally of confirmed cases surged past the five million mark in the fifth peak of the disease.
The Health Ministry on Wednesday logged 33,000 more infections driven by the Delta variant, pushing the national tally to 5.02 million, IRNA reported.
Iran is ramping up vaccination to contain the spread of the highly contagious mutation as it faces a fifth wave of the outbreak. 
President Ebrahim Raeisi in his weekly Cabinet meeting on Wednesday lauded the accelerated vaccine rollout but called it “insufficient” to stem the virus.
“One of the prerequisites for booming businesses and the reopening of schools and education centers is mass vaccination,” the president said. 
He pointed to the rise in vaccine imports and production and said vaccination centers had increased by two to three times over the past months.
Newly appointed Health Minister Bahram Einollahi also said that mass vaccination was on top of the government’s agenda and that rollout would pick up speed starting next week. 
“From next week, five million shots will arrive into the country on a weekly basis,” he said, noting, “We’ll receive 20 million jabs by [September 22] and another 30 million by [October 22].”
On Wednesday, more than 566,000 shots were given out across the country. So far more than 19 million people have received the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine and some nine million have been fully vaccinated.
Iran has in total administered over 28 million shots since it launched a vaccination campaign back in February.
The country is planning to vaccinate most of its population by March 2020.

Lambda Vigilance

Head of Covid-19 Operations, Babak Dinparast, discussed the Interior Ministry’s order to governors general across the country for stricter border control to prevent the dangerous Lambda variant from entering the country.
All travelers will be tested for a Covid infection upon arrival and those suspected of carrying the virus will be quarantined, the official said.
The new Lambda variant first emerged in Peru in August 2020 before being named a variant of interest by the World Health Organization. 
The mutation is more resistant to vaccines than the original coronavirus which came from Wuhan, China. The Delta variant, first detected in India, is currently dominant throughout Iran. 
Iran has been trying to contain a fifth wave of the pandemic over the past two months as its daily cases crossed 50,000 at one point and overnight fatalities of over 500 became common.
Early warnings by health officials against the Delta variant failed to prevent the mutation from taking over the country.
The Health Ministry on Wednesday registered a further 599 deaths, which brought the national toll to 108,893. Some 7,800 patients with severe symptoms are hospitalized in ICU units.
Worldwide coronavirus cases increased to 218.6 million on Wednesday as the death toll caused by the respiratory illness reached 4.53 million.