Iranian Health Ministry officials have said that as three cases of infection to new Omicron sub-variants – namely XBB and BQ1 – have been registered in Iran, the eighth wave of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has begun in the country.
The officials have urged the people to inoculate booster jabs of COVID vaccine so as to prevent a spike in infections.
It was in the early days of 2022 that an explosive outbreak of Omicron started in India and gradually spread to other countries including Iran, and now the new sub-variants of this disease are becoming an epidemic.
WHO officials say that unlike the previous COVID variants, Omicron does not hurt lungs in a severe way and has milder symptoms.
They, however warn that the Omicron XBB5 variant is more severe than the Delta variant with a higher mortality. It takes a shorter time for those infected to this variant to get severely ill, sometimes without any clear signs.
Iran’s Health Minister Bahram Einollahi recently expressed concern about high COVID infections in other countries as he said that daily COVID deaths had increased to three digits in countries like Japan, the United States and some European countries.
The minister highly advised all the Iranian citizens to inject COVID vaccines at least once a year as long as the disease has not been eradicated. He also called on everyone, especially those with underlying diseases and the elderly people to wear face masks for presence in populated areas.