The Iranian health ministry is preparing 14 million flu vaccine doses as part of its efforts to head off complications that might impact the healthcare system in the country in the autumn and winter if people simultaneously contract the flu and the COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Director of Iran’s Food and Drug Organization said on Saturday that Iran has an aggressive influenza vaccination program this calendar year ending late March compared to last year when 1.6 million shots were procured.
The first batch of two million flu vaccine doses has been made available for elderly people over 65 who register their unique national identity numbers in the pharmacies across the country, said Mohammad Reza Shanehsaz, adding that later phases of the vaccination program would cover other groups of population.
The scheme comes as Iran is struggling to prevent a renewed surge in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country, especially during the autumn and winter months when flu cases increase and pile a pressure on the country’s healthcare system.
Relying on its domestic capacities, Iran has managed to contain one of the largest outbreaks of COVID-19 in the Middle East and North Africa region.
The country has been under a series of harsh sanctions by the US, the country which refused to relax the bans even at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in March and April.
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Iran rose by 2,845 to 419,043 on Saturday, according to health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari who said deaths also surged by 166 to 24,118 while recoveries reached 357,632 people.