TEHRAN – Health Minister Saeed Namaki has expressed hope that the country will introduce the home-grown COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19, 2021).
The vaccine has achieved good results in three of about 12 cases, he said, adding, fortunately, the human trial will start in the coming weeks.
‘We hope to introduce the domestically-made vaccine by early next year and maybe sooner. The process of registration in the World Health Organization is also underway,” he explained, ISNA reported on Wednesday.
Under a new plan, a comprehensive disease screening will be started, and medical centers for COVID-19 treatment will increase to over 5,000 units, which are now 1,200 units, and the number of daily tests will reach from 25,000 to 40,000, he highlighted.
Some three million test kits are being imported to the country from South Korea, which takes between 20 and 25 minutes to identify the infection, he stated, adding, of course, this type of test is being produced domestically to perform 100,000 tests a day, which is the most successful method in early detection, he explained.
Namaki emphasized that with the cooperation of the Ministry of Communications, the COVID-19 patients will be tracked so that the identified positive cases will not be able to infect others by moving; it will drastically reduce mortality in the next months.
Death toll at record high
In a press briefing on Wednesday, Health Ministry spokesperson Sima-Sadat Lari confirmed 6,824 new cases of COVID-19 infection, raising the total number of infections to 588,648. She added that 467,911 patients have so far recovered, but 5,012 still remain in critical conditions of the disease.
During the past 24 hours, coronavirus daily deaths and new cases hit the record high, as 415 patients have lost their lives, bringing the total number of deaths to 33,714, she added.
Lari noted that so far 4,821,681 COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country.
She said the high-risk “red” zones include provinces of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, East Azarbaijan, South Khorasan, Semnan, Qazvin, Lorestan, Ardebil, Khuzestan, Kermanshah, Kohgiluyeh-Boyerahmad, Gilan, Bushehr, Zanjan, Ilam, Khorasan Razavi, Mazandaran, Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, Alborz, West Azarbaijan, Markazi, Kerman, North Khorasan, Hamedan, Yazd, and Kordestan.
The provinces of Hormozgan, Fars, and Golestan and Sistan-Baluchestan are also on alert.
