Minister: Iran to inject 800,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines by April 23
The Iranian health minister said 500,00 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have so far been given to the country’s people, adding the figure will reach 1.3 million doses by April 23.
In an address to a meeting on Friday, Saeed Namaki added currently, Iran is successfully importing safe COVID-19 vaccines and developing its homemade jabs, IRNA reported.
“Today, we can claim to be among the world’s successful countries in this field.”
Dismissing certain biased claims that Iran is lagging behind rest of the world in terms of importing COVID-19 jabs and vaccinating its people against the disease, the minister said the country has a favorable situation.
“Globally, it has been announced that public vaccination against the coronavirus will continue until the end of 2022. I give the assurance that all Iranians, or at least a major part of the country’s population, will have access to the vaccine by the end of the current calendar year (March 20, 2022). Even a large number of the country’s people will receive the jab prior to the end of the current administration’s tenure (August 3, 2021).”
He put the number of the vaccinated people in Japan, Oman, Egypt, Iraq, South Korea and Vietnam at 642,000, 193,000, 165,000, 143,000, 61,000 and 58,000 respectively, adding that except Japan, Iran is ahead of the other states listed above and in a much more favorable situation.
Namaki stressed that Iran is seriously continuing imports of COVID-19 vaccines, and, over the past 30 days, has purchased 420,000 doses from Russia, 200,000 doses from China and 126,000 doses from India.
“In addition, we received 700,000 doses of the vaccines through the global COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global
Access) program in Early April.”
He expressed hope that in view of the country’s favorable vaccine imports, the vaccination of the entire medical staff as well as the high-risk and vulnerable groups would be completed in seven days.
The minister said the process of developing the homemade COVID-19 vaccines is progressing very well, warning that in the future, only countries capable of producing the jabs domestically can continue their vaccination.
COVID casualties
On Friday, the Health Ministry announced that Iran’s daily COVID-19 deaths stood at 328 during the past 24 hours, with the country’s total death toll exceeding 66,000, according to Tasnim News Agency.
Providing the country’s latest COVID-19 statistics on Friday, the Health Ministry’s spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari put at 66,008 Iran’s exact total death toll since the outbreak of the pandemic in the county in late February 2020.
The total number of people testing positive for coronavirus in the country surpassed 2,194,100 after the detection of 25,261 new cases since yesterday, Lari added.
More than 1,761,400 patients have so far either recovered from disease or been discharged from hospitals across Iran, she added.
Among those currently undergoing treatment in the country’s medical centers, 4,652 are in critical conditions, Lari said.
The spokeswoman noted that more than 14.16 million coronavirus diagnostic tests have so far been carried out in Iran.
The number of people infected with COVID-19 across the world has surpassed 139 million, with the death toll exceeding 2.99 million.