President Hassan Rouhani of Iran said the country’s COVID-19 vaccine called ‘Pasteur’ will be distributed next Iranian calendar year (starting on March 20, 2021).
“We will do our best to start vaccination in the remaining months of the current Iranian year,” Rouhani said during a meeting of the National Task Force for Combating Coronavirus on Saturday, iranpress.com reported.
He added, the vaccine, “Co-produced by Iran and a foreign country, will be available next year and is called ‘Pasteur’, said President Rouhani.
Iran’s Health Minister Saeed Namaki had earlier announced that the first homegrown jab will be available by spring.
“Efforts to produce vaccines in the country are strongly well followed and as I said before, Iranian vaccines will be available by spring,” Namaki said on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in his address to the meeting of the National Task Force for Combating Coronavirus, President Rouhani referred to the significance of saving lives of the Iranian people and stressed, “We are proud that we have been on the path of registering a double-digit death for more than a week. However, this number is also too much and we have to reach the zero point.”
He further praised the medical staff and officials’ striving to save lives of those affected by the deadly virus and also hailed Iranians for observing COVID-19 protocols.
Iran’s daily death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has declined to its lowest level in more than seven months on January 10, registering 71 deaths according to the Health Ministry and kept remaining double-digit so far.
The country’s latest daily toll of the COVID-19 pandemic stood at 96 on Saturday.
The total number of Iranians testing positive for the respiratory disease has reached 1,324,395 detecting 6,100 new cases from Friday to Saturday, as reported by the Health Ministry.
So far over 8.47 million coronavirus diagnostic tests have been conducted in Iran.