Minister of Health and Medical Education Saeed Namaki said on Thursday that Iran will turn into a major hub of manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines in the region and one of the main exporters of vaccines in the next two or three months.
Upon the order by President Hasan Rouhani, Iran began vaccination against COVID-19 with a Russian-developed vaccine – Sputnik V – on Tuesday.
The son of Health Minister Saeed Namaki was the first Iranian person to receive the vaccine.
Namaki said earlier on Sunday that Iran selected and imported one of the least harmful and less dangerous vaccines after assessing the most credible vaccines available.
Iran decided to import COVID-19 vaccine if it has already passed the third phase of its human trial, while some of the regional countries did not do so, the minister said.
Iran has also bought some 16.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from COVAX for vaccination of 84 million people, he said, however noting that Iran needs to import more vaccines.
Iran took delivery of the first batch of Sputnik-V vaccines from Russia on February 4.
Source: IRNA
