Iran has received the second consignment of Russian-made Sputnik-V coronavirus vaccines, the country's Health Ministry says.
“Moments earlier, the second shipment of Sputnik vaccine, including 100,000 doses of the vaccine, arrived in Tehran a few days ahead of schedule,” Kianoush Jahanpour, the ministry's head of the public relations and information center wrote on twitter.
“After labeling and coding in the [Tracing, Tracking and Authentication Control] TTAC system, this consignment will be distributed in the country's health network for the vaccination of front-line health workers,” Jahanpour added.
Sputnik-V has proven efficient in curing the potentially fatal respiratory disease in 91.6 percent of the cases. The effectiveness of the vaccine, therefore, ranks as high as those produced by American pharmaceutical giants Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna or AstraZeneca, a similar British company.
The first shipment of the said vaccine arrived in Tehran on February 4. The third consignment has been planned to be received on February 28.
According to health officials, the first stage of the imports is to see the arrival of 500,000 doses of the vaccine in the country.
Last week, Iran’s ambassador to Russia said the shipments were made possible after Tehran and Moscow signed an agreement on January 29 to enable joint work on the vaccine’s production.