Doctors and International Bodies Criticize "Politicization" of Vaccines in Iran

Within a week of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei banning the purchase of American and British-made Covid-19 vaccines, Dr. Mohammad Reza Zafarghandi, president of Iran’s Medical Association, has argued that vaccines are the only way to fight coronavirus and begged leaders not to politicize the issue.

“It has been claimed that people who have previously been infected need no vaccines,” he told a press conference. “This and the fact that, after a while, vaccination must be repeated, means  that some countries have pre-ordered several times more doses of vaccine than their population.”

Without naming a specific product but clearly referring to those made by Pfizer and Moderna, Dr. Zafarghandi said that certain vaccines already had an effectiveness of 95 percent which he called a “valuable scientific achievement”.

It follows a petition by some 200 Iranian MPs on Sunday, January 8 asking the government to add France to its list of accepted suppliers, and an open letter by members of the Medical Council, to President Hassan Rouhani urging him to ensure that vaccines are procured immediately and not politicized, which warned that Iranian lives were at risk. The signatories to the Medical Council’s letter were Dr. Zafarghandi, its Supreme Council chairman Mostafa Moin, its General Assembly chairman Abbas Aghazadeh Masrur, and Iraj Fazel, chairman of the Medical Scientific Association.

International bodies have also reached to Khamenei’s decision. Michael Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization's Health Emergencies Program, had the same message for the Iranian Supreme Leader: “This organization has emphasized many times that coronavirus must not be politicized.”

Amnesty International also had some harsh words for the Supreme Leader.  “The decision by the leader of Islamic Republic to ban millions of Iranians from the vital American and British coronavirus vaccines is ignoring the right to life and the right to health,” the organization tweeted. “The Supreme Leader is playing with the lives of millions. [Iranian] officials must put an end to this shameless defiance of human rights obligations.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Mohammad Reza Salehi, who is overseeing clinical trials of the Iranian “CovIran-Barekat” vaccine, announced that results from animal testing indicated this product would be  between 80 and 90 percent effective. He claimed that the Iranian vaccine would be “one of the safest” in the world, with the “least amount of complications” because it followed the traditional model of injecting patients with an “inactive” form of the virus rather than using innovative RNA technology, as others do. He added that the wider Iranian population would not have access to it before the spring.

Provinces Round-up

The number of daily Covid-19 fatalities in Tehran province fell to 17 in the 24 hours before January 11, reported Anooshirvan Mohseni Bandpey, Tehran’s provincial governor. Currently, he said, more than 1,900 coronavirus patients are hospitalized in the province, and close to 950 of these are in ICUs. Although Tehran is now in a “yellow” state of alert, Bandpey warned, people must not assume the situation is normal and the danger of another surge in infections remains “just around the corner.” He also reported that the ban on traveling between provinces has been lifted across Iran, except for the three northern provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran and Golestan.

In the cities of Gilan, which have relatively small populations, a handful of new Covid-19 infections is sufficient to change the “alert level”, said Abtin Heydarzadeh, vice president of Gilan University of Medical Sciences. He reported that facilities for testing in Gilan have expanded and more people can now be tested “quickly and for free”. In the past 24 hours 102 new Covid-19 patients were hospitalized in Gilan, including 18 who were sent to intensive care units. Currently, 450 coronavirus patients are hospitalized across the province, 100 of them in ICUs.

Alborz witnessed no new coronavirus fatalities in the past 24 hours, reported Dr. Mohammad Fathi, president of Alborz University of Medical Sciences. During the same time period, he said, 55 new patients were hospitalized in the province, bringing the total number of hospitalizations in Alborz to 293.

Traffic curfews from 9pm to 4am have been extended in Alborz, added Noor Mohammad Fardi, director of Alborz Coronavirus Taskforce’s Operations Center. At least one-third of government employees in the province must work remotely.

In Ardebil, 26 new Covid-19 patients were hospitalized in the past 24 hours and 27 patients were released from hospitals, reported Dr. Shahram Habibzadeh, president of Ardebil University of Medical Sciences. The total number of hospitalized patients in the province now stands at 201, of whom 63 are in intensive care units.

In her daily briefing for January 11, health ministry spokeswoman Dr. Sima Sadat Lari announced the official coronavirus statistics for the past 24 hours: