At present, six vaccines including, Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Bharat, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson have been licensed for emergency use in Iran, he stated.

“A contract is being prepared for the import of 2 million doses of Pfizer vaccines from Belgium over the next one to two months, provided that there are no international problems with currency transfer.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, manufactured in Germany, is also awaiting the finalization of international agreements. The country of origin has promised up to 5 million doses,” he said, Khabaronline reported on Wednesday.

Earlier in August, Alireza Raisi, the spokesman for the National Headquarters for Coronavirus Control, said that negotiation was underway with one or two European countries to purchase Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on September 11 that the country is facing no red lines in importing coronavirus vaccines, even Pfizer and Moderna.

In his August 11 televised address, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested that containing the rapidly increasing wave of the Coronavirus is the first and foremost issue of the country.

Placing great emphasis on the fulfillment of duties and the implementation of decisions regarding the Coronavirus pandemic, Ayatollah Khamenei said “the vaccine, whether imported or domestically produced, must be provided with double effort and in any way possible made available to all people.”

“Fortunately, with the production of the domestic vaccine, its foreign import route is also paved, while before that, despite the payment for the vaccine, foreign sellers failed to fulfill their commitments,” the Leader said, urging officials to take importation and production of vaccine seriously.

Vaccination paces up, mortality drops

In July, delta variant mortality peaked and recorded over 700 daily deaths, but the increase of vaccination pace reduced the toll.

Today, more than one million doses of vaccine are injected daily in the country, and many age groups of the elderly, rare diseases patients, teachers, university professors, health professionals, veterans, etc. have been vaccinated and now the process of vaccinating students is underway.

Studies show that people who are not vaccinated are 4.5 times more likely to develop COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated, and 10 and 11 times more likely to be hospitalized and die, respectively.

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, over 40 million doses of foreign vaccines have already been imported and others are expected soon.

Iran is also producing vaccines jointly with three countries of Russia, Cuba, and Australia.

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Referring to good efforts made to import vaccines, he said: “By the end of September, we will definitely import about 30 million doses of vaccine. With another memorandum of understanding from October, we will receive another 30 million doses.

So, if we receive 60 million doses of vaccine, we can vaccinate the age group of 30 by the beginning of November.”

Referring to the domestic vaccine production, he noted that within the next 3 weeks, there will be a significant increase in vaccine production, reaching 10 to 15 million doses by the end of September.

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, over 18 million doses of foreign vaccines have already been imported and others are expected soon.

Iran is also producing vaccines jointly with two countries of Cuba and Australia, which may also be released by September.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, 14 vaccines are being domestically developed in the country which are in different study phases.

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The demands made by the pharmaceutical corporation led to a three-month delay in a vaccine deal with one Latin American nation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed in a report, insisting that the US drug maker has been “bullying” Latin American governments in COVID-19 vaccine negotiations.

For Argentina and Brazil, it said, “no national deals were agreed at all,” pointing out that any hold-up in countries receiving vaccines will result in more people contracting COVID-19 and potentially dying.

According to the report, officials from Argentina and the other Latin American country — which could not be identified due to a confidentiality agreement it has signed with Pfizer – stated that the company’s negotiators “demanded additional indemnity against any civil claims citizens might file if they experienced adverse effects after being inoculated.”

In Argentina and Brazil, it added, “Pfizer asked for sovereign assets to be put up as collateral for any future legal costs.”

One official who was present in the unnamed country’s negotiations described Pfizer’s demands as “high-level bullying” and said the government felt like it was being “held to ransom” in order to access life-saving vaccines, the report noted.

Meanwhile, activists have warned of a “vaccine apartheid” in which rich Western countries may be inoculated years before poorer regions. Additionally, legal experts have raised concerns that Pfizer’s demands constitute an abuse of power.

“Pharmaceutical companies shouldn’t be using their power to limit life-saving vaccines in low- and middle-income countries,” said Professor Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre on National and Global Health Law as quoted in the report. “[This] seems to be exactly what they’re doing.”

Protection against liability shouldn’t be used as “the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of desperate countries with a desperate population,” he further noted.

According to the report, Pfizer has been in talks with more than 100 countries and supranational organizations, and has supply agreements with nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean: Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. The terms of those deals are unknown.

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Moderna expects immunity from its vaccine to protect against the variants and is performing more tests in the coming weeks to confirm, the company said in a statement to CNN.

Pfizer said it is “generating data” on how well blood samples from people immunized with its vaccine “may be able to neutralize the new strain from the UK,” according to the report.

Pfizer and Moderna did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

The discovery of the new strain sowed a fresh wave of panic in a pandemic that has killed about 1.7 million people and infected more than 77.15 million worldwide.

The main worry is that the new variant is 40%-70% more transmissible.

Scientists have said there’s no evidence that vaccines currently being deployed in the United Kingdom – made by Pfizer and BioNTech – or other COVID-19 shots in development will not protect against this variant, known as the B.1.1.7 lineage.

A variant of the virus that is spreading in Britain has prompted countries to bar travelers from there. Some U.S. governors are also pushing for restrictions.

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