Disorganized and crowded lines of the elderly waiting for their second doses of COVID-19 vaccine get longer and more chaotic every day. According to local reports, despite Ministry of Health’s promise to text or contact people who is their turn, nobody has been contacted and local administrator keep writing new lists and calling more people than the available doses! Many have missed their second shot’s date because there has been shortage of vaccine and chaos from the bottom to the highest level of Ministry of Health, including National Task Force Spokesman and Health Minister for their empty promises and lies. One of the people in line said: “We will get infected here instead of vaccine!”
At the same time, homegrown vaccines are faced with growing concern and criticism from citizens and officials. Even Khamenei claiming to have received the first dose of COVIran Barekat on a charade in front of camera, did not subside people’s outrage over unproven vaccine which is even rebuked by the Deputy Health Minister in Research.
Social media have been filled with sarcastic and angry comments with many suggesting he had received Pfizer before this and all this was just for a show. At the beginning of the epidemic, he called COVID-19 the work of “enemies” and “foreign intelligence services” devised to harm Islamic Republic. He also claimed “this is not a big problem, we’ve had worse disasters.” The “Supreme Leader” then advised Iranians to pray to get rid of the virus! The leader of conspiracy theorists in Iran also blamed “jinns” for the epidemic. In January 2021, Khamenei banned importing of US and UK made vaccines, leading many Iranians to their death!
According to official data, since February 9, total of 5,543,750 shots have been administered and only 1,127,886 received both jabs and are fully vaccinated with AstraZeneca (COVAX), Covaxin (India), Sinopharm (China) and Sputnik V (Russia).
On the other hand, more provinces report increasing number of cases and hospitalizations. Even manipulated data of Ministry of Health shows 50% rise in “high risk” areas and red cities reached 32, in 8 provinces, including Tehran. Bushehr officials report 60% of the province being in “red” areas. Kohgiloyeh-Boyerahmad recorded 18% positivity rate. Head of Zanjan Medical University confirmed Indian (Delta) and British (Alpha) variants of coronavirus are the dominant strains in Iran and have spread throughout the country. Dr. Qezelbash admitted the Delta variant could be vaccine-evasive and therefore a catastrophe could be happening in Iran.
The Ministry of Health Spokesperson presented her daily underreported data, even though Iran Medical Board officials admitted the real numbers are at least 3 times higher. Sima Sadat Lari claimed 115 died of COVID-19 in Iran in the past 24 hours and 10,820 tested positive for the novel coronavirus. She continues to refuse providing any variant specific information. The graphs depict the ongoing 16+ months crisis in Iran, with Islamic Republic making it worse at every turn.
R0: 2.80
Total: 3,150,949 (+10,820)
Dead: 83,588 (+115)
Recovered: 2,809,595
Critical: 3,219 (-6)
Active Cases: 257,766 (-1,785)
Tests: 23,067,205 (27.5% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
