Rouhani: Iran to inject 1.4m COVID-19 vaccines by Friday

Speaking at a meeting of the National Task Force for Fighting the Coronavirus on Sunday, Rouhani said, “The first group of people, whose vaccination is very important to us, will receive the vaccine in the next seven days and, then, we will start giving the jabs to the second group, IRNA reported.

He stressed that if the government manages to provide seven million to eight million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to inoculate those who are above the age of 65, the situation will become much different.

Rouhani said all efforts by his administration are focused on making COVID-19 vaccines available to the people of the country to alleviate their concerns about the future.

The president also said a single round of vaccination would not be sufficient for developing immunity against the coronavirus, noting that it may be necessary to repeat the vaccination in six months.

Quoting Health Minister Saeed Namaki as saying that vaccination against the coronavirus would not create immunity for even one year, the president concluded that Iran must supply mass amounts of vaccines for the coming years.

The country needs to import as much COVID-19 vaccines as it can within the next two months, he noted, stressing that the quality of the purchased vaccines must be confirmed by the Health Ministry.

The president also stated that his administration has focused efforts on developing the homemade vaccines as soon as possible.

“We are highly hopeful to be able to use the domestically developed vaccines in the summer,” Rouhani stated.

On Thursday, Iran’s Ambassador in Moscow Kazem Jalali said a contract was finalized to import 60 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine within the coming months.

Earlier, Iranian officials announced that they have devised plans to receive around 16 million doses of vaccines through the World Health Organization's COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) program, import more than 25 million doses from other countries, and produce 25 million other doses domestically.

Iran’s health minister said on Friday the country is importing safe COVID-19 vaccines and successfully developing its homemade jabs.

“Today, we can claim to be among the world’s successful countries in this field.”

Dismissing certain biased claims that Iran is lagging behind the 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).”

Infections, deaths

On Saturday, Iranian Health Ministry announced in a statement that 21,312 new COVID-19 cases were detected in the country during the past 24 hours, putting the daily death toll at 319.

The ministry added that of the newly detected cases, 2,176 have been hospitalized.

The total number of the infections since the outbreak of the pandemic in the country in late February 2020 has reached 2,215,445, with the death toll standing at 66,327, it said.

The statement also said that 1,772,688 COVID-19 patients have so far either recovered from the disease or been discharged from hospitals across the country, regretting that 4,694 infected people are currently in critical conditions.

According to the Health Ministry, 14,277,782 coronavirus diagnostic tests have so far been carried out in Iran.

Earlier, the Health Ministry announced that 257 cities in the country are coded red (very high-risk), while 129 cities are categorized as orange (high-risk), adding that based on a decision by the National Task Force for Fighting the Coronavirus, travel to and from these cities is prohibited.

It put the number of the country’s yellow (medium-risk) and blue (low-risk) cities at 51 and 11, respectively.Follow the Official Rokna NEWS Telegram Channel For More and fresh NEWS.