TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran’s campaign to inoculate its population against the coronavirus and promote itself as an emerging vaccine manufacturer continued slowly as health authorities announced Tuesday that its third homegrown vaccine has entered clinical trials.
However, details about production remained limited.
Although Iran, with a population of more than 80 million, has so far imported foreign vaccines from Russia, China, India and Cuba to cover more than 1.2 million people, concerns about the lagging pace of vaccination have driven Iran’s drive to local produced vaccines. Richer countries worldwide absorb the lion’s share of vaccine doses.
Iranian scientists, as elsewhere in the world, are rushing to compact the typically years-long process of developing vaccines into a few months – a task that has gained urgency as the country struggles to stop and stop the worst virus outbreak in the Middle East. the economy is declining. harsh US sanctions.
But details about the Islamic Republic’s vaccine production efforts are sparse. Two other Iranian vaccines are also in clinical trials, with the most advanced, called Barekat, tested on 300 people to date.
The government said 20,000 volunteers in the capital of Tehran and other cities will soon receive Iran’s new vaccine called Fakhra, which an official described to the state media as “100% safe,” without providing any evidence or data to back up the claim. to support. . Earlier this week, the government launched a vaccine manufacturing plant that it says can make 3 million doses per day.
The vaccine introduced on state television on Tuesday was created by an affiliate of the Iranian Ministry of Defense known as the Research and Innovation Organization.
As with the Barekat vaccine, still in the early stages of clinical trialsthe company used inactivated coronaviruses from 35,000 samples to create the new vaccine, a traditional technology based on growing batches of the virus and then killing it. In comparison, Western drug makers are taking a newer gene-based approach to address the peaks in the outer structure of the coronavirus, a method never before approved for widespread use.
Iran’s fragmented approach to domestic vaccine production, with entities ranging from state-owned pharmaceutical conglomerates to the Department of Defense working separately on at least six different vaccines, reflect the broader rivalry between factions and competing power structures.
At a ceremony attended by senior officials in Tehran on Tuesday, Iranian state television broadcast images of just one volunteer receiving the Fakhra vaccine, named after key Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in a November attack that attacked Iran. blamed Israel.
While Fakhrizadeh was known to lead the country’s disbanded nuclear weapons program in the early 2000s, Iran has hailed him as a leader in national efforts to develop coronavirus vaccines. Fakhrizadeh’s son was the first to receive the injection of the new vaccine.
The coronavirus has infected more than 1.7 million people in Iran and killed 61,427 people, according to figures from the Ministry of Health released Tuesday – the highest death toll in the Middle East.
Iran formally launched its limited vaccination campaign last month, distributing Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine to health workers and people with chronic health problems. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has banned Iran from importing American and British vaccines, a reflection of the deep-seated mistrust of the West.
Nonetheless, Iran later said it would receive 4.2 million doses of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and UK-based drug manufacturer AstraZeneca through the global COVAX initiative created to ensure low and low middle-income countries have fair access to vaccines.
The Health Ministry has pledged to vaccinate all adults in the country by the end of September, although it remains uncertain how the government will achieve that ambitious goal. Iran says it expects to import doses of COVAX for more than 16 million people.
The government has claimed that harsh US sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2018 undermine efforts to purchase foreign-made vaccines and run massive vaccination campaigns, such as those in the US and Europe. While international banks and financial institutions often hesitate to handle Iranian transactions for fear of being fined or banned from the US market, US sanctions have specific exclusions for drugs and humanitarian aid to Iran.
Associated Press writers, Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Isabel DeBre in Dubai, UAE, contributed to this report.