Over 90 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered across Iran since the start of the vaccination campaign, the Health Ministry announced on Wednesday.
More than 53.3 million people have received a first shot, 36.6 million have been fully vaccinated and 102,000 have been given a booster shot, pushing the national tally past the 90 million mark, ISNA reported.
Despite the adequate vaccine coverage rate for the nation’s population of 85 million people, Iran is seeing a steady rise in transmission rates as 29 cities were placed on red alert once again.
Alireza Naji, head of the Virology Research Center at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, warned against a sixth wave of the contagion as more cities are categorized as high-risk and extremely high-risk.
“There are signs of an increase in the disease in some western provinces and some others … some cities have been coded as red,” Naji said. “This is a sign and we need to pay careful attention to it.”
Iran entered the fifth peak of the pandemic over summer when daily infections skyrocketed to 50,000 and overnight mortalities to as high as 700.
Currently, the daily death rate stands close to 200 and some 10,000 people test positive for the virus on a daily basis.
Naji noted, “The positive cases that are reported everyday are official numbers and we know that the figure is much higher.”
According to the virologist, signs point to the start of the sixth wave. “In these circumstances, the reopening of schools, universities and other businesses … can be very dangerous.”
The government is pushing for a return to normalcy as more people are getting vaccine shots every day. Over the past 24 hours, some 800,000 more were vaccinated.
Many schools across the country will resume operations starting next week. Iran closed down all educational institutions back in February 2020 when the virus first emerged in a central city.
Naji warned that vaccination rates need to grow higher and the spread of the virus must be curbed before crowded centers such as schools can return to pre-pandemic circumstances.