TEHRAN (Iran News) – Leader Says COVID-19 Spread First and Foremost Issue in the Country . Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei says foreign providers of COVID vaccines initially reneged on their promises and refused sales to Iran, but changed course and started providing Iran with vaccines only after the country successfully managed to produce jabs against the deadly virus at home.
Delivering a televised speech on Wednesday, Ayatollah Khamenei described the coronavirus outbreak as the country’s first and foremost issue.
The Leader called on the executives to double their efforts to procure vaccines, whether imported or domestically developed, and made them available to everyone.
“Fortunately, the production of vaccines within the country paved the path for the import of foreign shots as well, whereas before that, foreign suppliers would renege on their promises despite having received the payments,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
The Leader called on the people to display the same level of heightened sensitivity to safety precautions to curb the disease as they did when the pandemic first began “so that their lives and those of others would not be endangered.”
He stressed that frontline health workers, who have been working under immense pressure since the pandemic began, need a slight break from the strain, which will be provided if people strictly follow safety protocols for a couple of months.
He called for a new and stronger defense against the deformation and mutation of the virus, saying that the death of more than 500 people in a day, as well as tens of thousands of new cases of coronavirus infection, is really painful, so we have a responsibility to deal with it.
The Leader called the president’s one-week deadline to gather proposals for confronting the disease and decide on them good measure, saying that at the appointed time, every necessary action must be decided and acted upon decisively.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution also considered the extreme fatigue of the medical staff and the physical and mental pressures on them to be a great concern and appreciated them for their efforts.
Ayatollah Khamenei, in his advice to the officials, emphasized providing a wide range of vaccines.
Until then, he said, vaccines will also have been made fully available to everyone, and even though the pandemic will not have gone away, the crisis and the fatalities will have subsided.
The Leader also pointed to the arrival of the lunar month of Muharram, which coincides with the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (PBUH), the third Shia imam, advising the people to meticulously and thoroughly observe COVID safety guidelines while attending the mourning rituals and ceremonies observed during this time.
Ayatollah Khamenei hailed an initiative by President Ebrahim Raisi to set a one-week deadline for proposals on a comprehensive national response to the current peak of the outbreak. “At the designated time, the response to the issue should be carefully weighed, and any necessary measures adopted and enforced accordingly,” he said.
