Iran's Health Minister Saeed Namaki on Monday evening said Iran will be able to administer half a million vaccine shots a day in the near future.
Vaccinations will go from the current 150,000 per day to 300,000-400,000 and could even reach half a million vaccines per day in “future days”, Namaki was quoted as saying by ISNA.
“We’ll vaccinate the target group by late June, that is, people over the age of 60 and individuals suffering from rare diseases,” the top health official said.
Iran is stepping up vaccine rollout as it receives more of its delayed shipments of the jabs under COVAX, a global initiative aiming to secure fair distribution of vaccines around the world.
COVAX delivered to Tehran 1.452 million shots of Italian-manufactured AstraZeneca jabs on Sunday night, taking the total number of vaccines given by the global organization to 2.23 million, out of the 16.8 million COVAX has agreed to send.
Namaki said, “Starting June, homegrown vaccines will be used in the national vaccination campaign.”
One of Iran’s local vaccines, dubbed COVIran Barekat, is being produced in large volumes even before phase three of human trials concludes.
Over 407,000 Iranians have taken both shots of a Covid-19 vaccine and 2.163 million have received the first dose, bringing the total number of administered shots to 2.571 million.
According to the Food and Drug Administration of Iran, the country has received a total of 5.6 million Covid-19 vaccines from Russia, China, India, Italy and South Korea.