Islamic Republic Health Minister announced the COVIran Barekat, developed by “Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order,” has been approved for emergency use as the first COVID-19 vaccine made in Iran! Saeed Namaki said the vaccine using inactivated virus is the “most effective and safest” vaccine in the world! He went on praising himself and his work managing the coronavirus epidemic in Iran in the past 16 months, and claimed about 15 million will be vaccinated by mid August. Namaki continued there would be 5-6million dose per month capacity at the moment and this would be increased to 50-60million per month by winter! He even asserted Iran is ready to export vaccines to other countries, such as Armenia, in winter. These claims were made by head of FDA as well, which were scrutinized in our yesterday’s report.
It is notable that the timeline for vaccination of vulnerable groups has been pushed back several times. Islamic Republic officials use the term “vaccinated” too loosely, using it for people who have received only 1 dose, while numerous studies have concluded 2 doses are needed for any immunization. Saeed Namaki promised COVIran Barekat would be distributed next week to compensate for the widespread shortage of vaccines. He also predicted that next week, PastoCoVac, the product of Pasteur Institute and Cuba will be approved next week. The Health Minister repeated his lies about preventing other countries from testing their vaccines on Iranians while Soberana 02 has been tested on more than 24,000 Iranians in its third phase of clinical trials.
All these empty promises are put forward by Namaki and other officials when Rouhani’s term is about to end and these are all so they can leave a “legacy” no matter how deranged it is playing with people’s lives. COVIran Barekat has not published any of its results yet!
In the meantime, Ministry of Health announced since February 9, only 851,207 (1.01% of population) have been fully vaccinated and total of 5,205,652 shots administered.
On the other hand, more health and medical experts join in the call for more precautions against spread of Indian (Delta) and South African (Beta) variants of coronavirus in Iran. Dr. Hashemian, head of ICU at Masih Daneshvari hospital in Tehran warns about the Delta variant which is 40% more transmittable and demanded the Ministry of Health to take responsibility and prevent it from reaching the rest of the country from Hormozgan, Bushehr, Sistan-Baluchestan, Khuzestan, Kermanshah, Qom, Fars, West Azerbaijan and Tehran. He also warned that vaccination process in the country is too slow and must speed up as soon as possible. Some other infectious diseases experts confirmed other variants such as the ones found in Nepal and Vietnam have also been identified in Iran. Unfortunately, Islamic Republic officials continue to hide the statistics about variants in the country.
Shahrud Medical University in Semnan province reported a slow increase in coronavirus cases. Head of Shiraz Medical University warned about infection in younger individuals and rise in cases and COVID-19 hospitalizations across Fars province. Chairman of Tehran Corona Combating Committee said the decline in cases is too slow in the capital and hospitals are still overwhelmed. Zanjan authorities sounded the alarm for an uptrend of cases and hospitalizations in the province, warning the next wave of coronavirus is on its way. According to officials, average positivity rate has reached 13.6%! Kohgiloyeh-Boyerahmad reported 20% positivity rate among performed PCR tests.
Ministry of Health Spokesperson claimed 10,715 tested positive for the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours in Iran while 119 died of COVID-19. According to Iran Medical Board officials, the real numbers are at least 3 times higher than the daily reports. Daily positivity rate and cases are on the rise as seen on the graphs.
R0: 2.90
Total: 3,039,432 (+10,715)
Dead: 82,217 (+119)
Recovered: 2,666,601
Critical: 3,416 (-29)
Active Cases: 290,614 (-3,213)
Tests: 21,691,536 (25.9% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Koosha Mahshid Falahi
