Islamic Republic Health Minister once again boasted about 74% of eligible population in Iran receiving 2 doses of these COVID-19 vaccines. Eynollahi also claimed 24 million doses of “domestic vaccines” have been delivered to the Ministry of Health for administration. However, he did not give more specifics about numbers or names of those shots. In addition, according to WHO, 3 doses of Sinopharm is required for “full vaccination” and since the ineffective Chinese shot is the major vaccine used in Iran, based on the official data, only 2,504,552 (2.98% of population) have received 3 shots. The same data indicate that since February 9, merely 49,377,847 (58.78% of population) have been administered twice.
On the other hand, the Islamic Republic media and officials are trying to boost the validity of the utterly failed “homegrown vaccines.” IRGC-affiliated media ran a story about a nurse who had been told by her friend who lives in the US, “where did you buy Pfizer in Iran?” when she showed the friend her antibody titer results from COVIran Barekat shots! Meanwhile, Secretary of Scientific Committee at National COVID-19 Task Force claimed 30million doses of “domestic vaccines” are available (6million more than what Eynollahi had said!), and since they are “better than their foreign counterparts,” they will be used as booster shots in the country. It is worth mentioning, none of the “domestic” shots have published their data. Dr. Jama’ati also claimed 3 centers in Iran are “sequencing” COVID-19 cases and have not found any Omicron yet. A claim that has been proven wrong and other officials have confirmed, there is no sequencing performed in Iran.
In the meantime, as more students contract the novel coronavirus, 3 provinces (Ardabil, Qom and Hormozgan) report increasing cases, Omicron has been confirmed in Iraq and Pakistan, health experts warn about slow 3-dose vaccination, and air quality deteriorates by the day, Islamic Republic pushes forward with its “smart quarantine” plan which allows all businesses and institutions to go back to normal as long as they have received 1 dose of any vaccine. According to an official, unvaccinated government employees will be fined from tomorrow.
The Ministry of Health Spokesperson claimed 61 have died of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours and 2,289 tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Professor of Epidemiology at Tehran University believes these numbers must be multiplied by 7 and Civil Registration Organization data show more than 313,000 have died of the disease since February 2020. Graphs illustrate the ongoing crisis in Iran and forming of the new wave.
R0: 1.75
Total: 6,154,813 (+2,289)
Dead: 130,722 (+61)
Recovered: 5,969,591
Critical: 3,104 (-22)
Active Cases: 54,500 (-3,990)
Total Tests: 40,054,772
Cover: Hossein Moammeri
