Covid Science Chief: Iran Has No Suitable Planes to Import the Pfizer Vaccine

Stringent lockdowns have now been in place in Iran for 23 days. In that time, the number of recorded daily fatalities from Covid-19 has fallen from close to 500 to fewer than 300. The number of confirmed cases has also dropped from upwards of 13,000 a day to below 8,000 per day.

Iranians traditionally celebrate Yalda, the night of the winter solstice and the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, by getting together with the family and close friends. This year Yalda falls on December 21 and the National Coronavirus Taskforce has announced that on that day the nighttime traffic curfew will be extended to discourage people from attending gatherings. Businesses will be closed from 6pm in all cities in Iran, regardless of the alert level.

Elsewhere, however, the prospect of a Covid-19 vaccine continues to dominate the headlines. As yet no decision has been made about buying and importing doses of the vaccine from other countries. This seems to have been further pushed back by an announcement from Mostafa Ghanei, chairman of the National Coronavirus Taskforce’s scientific committee.

“Iran lacks the necessary means to transport the American Pfizer vaccine and we have announced that Iran does not want this vaccine,” said Ghanei on December 13. “We have told the global Covax initiative that we do not want this vaccine because it must be kept at 70 degrees below zero and we have no facilities for doing this.”

COVAX is a global initiative launched by the World Health Organization aiming to work with vaccine manufacturers to provide countries worldwide equitable access to a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine.

Earlier Abdolnaser Hemmati, governor of Iran’s Central Bank, had also said that as a result of US sanctions, Iran would not be able to buy and import the vaccine through COVAX initiative. Afterwards, however, a spokesman for COVAX told the Washington Post that the US Treasury had given permission for Iran to make the down-payment for the vaccine. There are, at least, no legal obstacles.

An Iranian Vaccine by Spring?

“Despite claims by those people who say were are not able to this, we are going to make this vaccine and we will offer this Iranian vaccine to the people in the spring of 2021,” said health minister Saeed Namaki.

He went on to claim that the recent drop in the number of coronavirus infections and fatalities had proved wrong those naysayers who predicted that recorded fatalities would soon reach 1,200 per day. He also dismissed the various, conflicting comments and predictions about an Iranian vaccine in recent weeks, and said: “These days many people like to talk too much. I have no idea why some people find a microphone so attractive because there is no reason to say things all the time.”

Namaki also denied that “dubious” vaccines from other countries had been or would be tested on patients in Iran. “We will not allow Iranian people to be used as lab mice,” he said.

Provinces Round-up

According to the health ministry, of the 12 cities in a red state of alert in Iran, four are in Mazandaran, indicating that this province is in a critical condition. Hossein Hassanzadeh, the deputy governor of Mazandaran, said that the rest of the cities in the province are in an orange state of alert and the overall situation is a cause for concern. He called on people to avoid gatherings on the night of Yalda and said that a traffic curfew will come into effect from 6pm to 4am on December 19 and 20.

The scenic landscape of Mazandaran is a time-worn tourist attraction and, being relatively close to Tehran, it has been the destination for repeated waves of travelers over the course of 2020 who have spread the virus beyond the capital.  Currently 960 Covid-19 patients are hospitalized in Mazandaran.

In the past 24 hours eight patients lost their lives to coronavirus in Alborz, bringing the province’s death toll to 2,459. During the same time period 56 new patients were hospitalized and the current total number of hospitalized suspected and confirmed Covid-19 cases in the province stands at 556.

Alborz is a neighbor of Tehran province and health ministry officials often refer to it as the “coronavirus crossroads”. In recent weeks the number of Covid-19 fatalities in the province had reached one per hour but after restrictions were imposed on November 21 this number has been falling.

In Kermanshah in the past 24 hours 79 new Covid-19 patients were hospitalized and 105 were discharged from hospital. With the deatha of nine patients recorded in the past 24 hours the official death toll in the province has now reached 1,364. Currently 384 Covid-19 patients are hospitalized across the province. Of these people, 94 are in ICUs and 32 of them are connected to ventilators. Last month the number of hospitalizations in the province had exceeded 1,200 and provincial official were planning to set up field hospitals in cooperation with the army.

In recent weeks Razavi Khorasan has been hit by a third wave of coronavirus, said Ali Asghar Anjidani, secretary of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences’ Covid-19 Treatment Workgroup, but “fortunately, with the enactment of restrictions and the compliance with health protocols by the people the rate of infections has dropped.” He reported that the alert level in all cities in the province has been downgraded from red to orange but warned that this does not mean that the epidemic is nearly over, especially with the coming of winter and the possibility of a fourth wave.

Currently 1,210 Covid-19 patients are hospitalized across Razavi Khorasan, a drop from 2,080 four weeks ago. Of the currently hospitalized patients 376 are being treated in ICU wards. On average 200 patients with coronavirus symptoms are hospitalized in the province every day.

Iran’s Latest Coronavirus Statistics

In her daily briefing for December 13, health ministry spokeswoman Dr. Sima Sadat Lari announced the official coronavirus statistics for the past 24 hours:

Dr. Lari reported that currently 12 cities are red, 288 are orange and 148 are yellow.