TEHRAN (Iran News) – Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi ensured on Sunday that there were no concerns about fast vaccination as the country’s health network has the capability to vaccine 20 million people a month.

Speaking in an event to honor healthcare workers, Deputy for Health in the Ministry of Health and Medical Education said that Iran’s health network, founded 30 years ago by great healthcare figures, is a strong point that reaches across the country so that no village with over 1,000 people population is deprived of the health network.

In addition to Health Houses – small local health centers, Raisi said, there are over 2,500 medical centers in cities and countryside, and the centers are all connected to hospitals and specialized centers.

These centers in the health network managed to carry out three rounds of COVID-19 screening across the country and it is now extending to the nomad population, according to the Deputy Minister.

He also underlined that the health network will upgrade from primary healthcare to a universal health coverage system (UHC); the transmission is now in the pilot phase.

Several COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing projects have been developed in Iran and some of them have undergone clinical tests.

Meanwhile yesterday, a second locally-manufactured COVID-19 vaccine has entered human trials in Iran.

The human trial of the vaccine, called Razi COV-Pars, kick-started on Sunday morning with the injection into two volunteers at Tehran’s Rasoul Akram Hospital.

This is the second Iranian vaccine that has entered the human trial after, COVIRAN vaccine made headlines as the first viable Iranian-made vaccine for the coronavirus last month.

Developed by Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, COV-Pars is an inhalable vaccine. It employs recombinant versions of the spike protein, which tutors the immune system against the wild virus. This works with an adjuvant, a compound that puts frontline immune cells on battle alert to muster a robust immune response to the protein antigen.

COV-Pars is administered in three stages; two intramuscular shots 21 days apart and an intranasal administration 30 days after the second jab.

Developers say not only does this protect the recipient from the virus, but it prevents them from transmitting the virus to others. Simply put, those who receive the COV-Pars vaccine will not need a mask.

Its domestic rival, Coviran, is ahead in the schedule, and as it will reportedly start the second phase of the human trial next month. At the same time, Iran has imported two batches of Russia’s Sputnik V and a batch of China’s Sinopharm to vaccinate sensitive groups.