While daily COVID-19 death toll in Iran remains above 200 and thousands of cases are identified on a daily basis, provinces which had closed their schools, begin to resume their activities with in-person classes from Saturday, February 26. In the past 24 hours, Alborz reported increasing number of cases and deaths. Khuzestan had more than 10,125 visited hospitals. Fars recorded 150 hospitalizations in the past 24 hours, with total of 185 in ICU. Gilan continues to admit more patients every day. West Azerbaijan has had more than 1,700 PCR positive cases in the past month, of which only 21.6% had received 3 doses!
Despite all that, Head of Islamic Republic FDA claimed Iran has passed the peak of the sixth wave! Daraei also spouted off that Iran is the only country in the world which has made a vaccine against Omicron. He said 2 domestic companies have “successfully made it!” He did not provide more details and failed to mention why were these vaccines necessary or how they would be more successful than other “homegrown” vaccines, including PastoCoVac, COVPars, Fakhra, Noora, Spikogen, which had never met the expectations and none of them has published their results or received recognition/approval from international health organizations.
According to official definition of “full vaccination” and Ministry of Health data, since February 9, only 22,775,852 (27.11% of Iran population) are vaccinated against COVID-19 with these vaccines. It is estimated that more than 53 million Iranians are at risk of contracting Omicron. The majority of shots used in Iran are the ineffective Sinopharm and COVIran Barekat. WHO recommends 3 doses of Sinopharm to be effective against Delta but studies have found the vaccine ineffective against Omicron.
The Ministry of Health Spokesperson claimed 226 have died of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours and 12,957 tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Number of daily tests performed in the country continue to decline despite experts advice to have a more active case finding. Professor of Epidemiology at Tehran University believes these numbers must be multiplied by 7 and Civil Registration Organization data show more than 323,000 have died of the disease since February 2020.
R0: 2.36
Total: 7,011,932 (+12,957)
Dead: 135,952 (+226)
Recovered: 6,579,768
Critical: 4,110 (+126)
Active Cases: 296,212 (-5,661)
Total Tests: 46,938,366
Cover: Amid Farahi
