In a major milestone, Iran’s tally of coronavirus shots administered crossed the 100 million mark nearly ten months after the launch of the national immunization campaign.
The Health Ministry announced the achievement on Wednesday as 83% the target population received the first dose, ISNA reported.
Some 64% of people over the age of 12 have been fully vaccinated, data collected by the ministry showed.
Iran’s death toll from the pandemic would have been three times higher if people had not been vaccinated against the infectious disease, Head of the Health Ministry’s Information and Technology Department Ali Sharifi said.
It has especially prevented the deaths of the elderly who were among the first target groups to get vaccinated.
Over the past 24 hours, 125 more coronavirus patients died from the contagion, pushing the number of mortalities to 128,500.
Before mass vaccination and at the peak of the fifth wave, Iran reported over 700 deaths in one single day.
Iran has in total imported 148.7 million vaccine doses since February. Experts suggest that the country needs 180 million jabs before it can overcome the crisis.
Most Iranians have been inoculated with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine supplied by the Iranian Red Crescent Society. The organization has delivered over 131.4 million jabs of the Chinese vaccine.
Several countries, including South Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Austria and Poland have sent the country AstraZeneca shots totaling 7.7 million doses.
Russia was supposed to deliver 60 million shots of its Sputnik vaccine but it has so far only exported some four million jabs.
Iran hopes to avert the sixth wave of the outbreak through fast vaccine rollout. It is currently giving Covid-19 shots to students over the age of 12 so as to reopen schools and universities.
The country is still implementing a nighttime curfew across the country to restrict movements and gatherings.
Despite all measures, the number of cities on red alert in Iran are on the rise.