TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iran receives second shipment of COVAX vaccines. Iran has received the second batch of the COVID-19 vaccine from the COVAX facility on Sunday.
The shipment consisted of 1,452,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine manufactured by Catalent Anagni of Italy.
The COVAX Facility is a partnership, co-led by Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi-The Vaccine Alliance, and the World Health Organization (WHO), alongside key delivery partner United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The consignment is the second COVAX shipment to the country, with future consignments of the approved allocation of COVID-19 vaccines to be delivered, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran, through the UNICEF procurement channel.
With the support of the UNICEF procurement channel under the COVAX facility, I.R Iran received the first batch of AZ COVID-19 vaccines, produced by SK-Bio Institute of South Korea, containing 700,800 doses on 5th April.
Mass vaccination against COVID-19 started on Iranian citizens with the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine on February 9.
While Iran continues efforts to mass-produce local candidates, several foreign vaccines have already been imported and others are expected soon.
Iran is currently producing vaccines jointly with three countries of Cuba, Russia, and Australia, which may also be released by September.
According to the Ministry of Health, about 3.2 million coronavirus vaccines have been imported into the country so far. Some 1,713,648 people received the first dose and 342,950 people have also received the second dose so that the total number of vaccines injected in the country has reached 2,056,598 doses.
New cases and mortalities
In a press briefing on Monday, Health Ministry’s spokesperson, Sima-Sadat Lari, confirmed 14,319 new cases of COVID-19 infection, raising the total number of infections to 2,765,485. She added that 2,242,023 patients have so far recovered, but 5,264 remain in critical conditions of the disease.
During the past 24 hours, 286 patients have lost their lives, bringing the total number of deaths to 77,222, she added.
So far, 18,151,487 COVID-19 diagnostic tests have been performed in the country.
