Iran is poorly prepared for the current new corona wave: the national vaccination campaign is stuck. National producers feel duped.
Treatment of corona patients in a hospital in southern Iran
Since mid-April, the number of new infections with the corona virus has been increasing again in Iran. According to statistics from the Worldometer website, almost 200,000 acute COVID-19 cases are currently registered in Iran. In order to prevent a new wave, the Ministry of Health ordered a fourth corona vaccination for all age groups at the end of April. Currently, around a third of the population has been vaccinated three times: 28 of the country's almost 84 million inhabitants. Over 64 million have been vaccinated once and just over 58 million have been vaccinated twice. “However, the national vaccination campaign has come to a standstill,” reports doctor Hadi Yazdani from Iran in an interview with DW.
After a peak in the wave in August 2021 with over 700 fatalities and over 50,000 new infections a day, the situation eased for a few months, also thanks to an intensification of the vaccination campaign. “The government is now busy with other challenges and no longer seems to be taking the pandemic seriously,” observes Yazdani.
Expiry date pasted
In addition, there is uncertainty among the population. The domestically produced vaccines, which are manufactured in six institutes in the country, do not have a WHO approval stamp. Those who want to be vaccinated prefer to be vaccinated with doses from AstraZeneca. In mid-June, the Tehran daily “Etemad” reported that expired AstraZeneca vaccine doses were administered in the major cities of Tehran and Mashhad and the labels with the expiry date of July 1st were pasted over with a new label.
Numerous Iranians reported similar experiences on social networks and warned against visiting the vaccination centers. According to doctor Hadi Yazdani, new cans have not been imported since the turn of the year.
The domestic producers once supported by the leadership are also threatening to be left with vaccine doses that are past the expiry date. According to WHO statistics, by the end of May only every tenth vaccine dose administered came from Iranian production, a total of almost 13 million units. Costs for the government: 280 million euros, ie 21 euros per dose. For comparison, in February 2021, Iran received 4.2 million doses of the vaccine from AstraZeneca for €2.50 per dose through the United Nations Covax initiative.
Vaccination center in Tehran's Central Market Hall
The government currently owes the local producers the equivalent of 180 million euros, the news portal Khabar-Online reported in early June. Initially, domestic vaccine production was massively promoted. The Barekat Institute alone is said to have received one billion US dollars from the former Rouhani government to deliver 120 million doses of the Coviran Barekat vaccine, 50 million of them by the end of summer 2021. By the end of May 2022, however, only 12.6 million had been delivered Doses of Coviran Barekat delivered to Iranian vaccination centers.
According to WHO statistics for Iran, China's Sinopharm vaccine ranks first with more than 130 million doses, followed by AstraZeneca's Anglo-Swedish product with 22.5 million doses.
The Chairman of the The parliamentary health commission, Hosseinali Shahriari, confirmed in an interview with Khabar-Online that some producers had stopped production and their vaccination doses would soon expire. “They weren't treated fairly by the government,” says Shahriari.
Khamenei's arbitrary decree
The production of the local vaccines was ordered by the religious leader Ali Khamenei. “American and English vaccines may not be bought for Iran or used here,” Khamenei ordered in early 2021. The 82-year-old ayatollah saw the corona virus as a US biological weapon that would have been genetically modified for use in Iran.
His insistence on domestic vaccines was supported by the hardliners around current President Ebrahim Raisi . The physician Bahram Eynollahi, for example, opposed the import of vaccines from the West; he has been Minister of Health since August 2021.