Iranian Health Ministry Official: Promise of Importing 20 Million Pfizer Vaccine Doses is Empty Talk

Kianosh Jahanpour, head of the Public Relations Center of the Ministry of Health, on Monday, the first of Shahrivar, denied the news of the possibility of importing 40 million doses of vaccine through the COVAX scheme and described it as “empty talk”.

Mr. Jahanpour wrote on his Twitter page that “Iran’s quota from the COVAX mechanism is 16 million and 800 thousand doses of coronavirus vaccine that have been ordered and 2.2 million of them have been delivered”.

This statement was a response to news that Nasser Riahi, head of the Drug Importers Union, had previously announced, saying “the possibility of importing up to 20 million doses of Pfizer vaccine through Germany and 20 million doses of American Johnson & Johnson vaccine from Belgium through the COVAX scheme is under consideration for Iran”.

The head of the Public Relations Center of the Ministry of Health emphasized in his tweet that “if you heard that 20 million doses of a specific vaccine are available from COVAX, you have encountered empty talk, don’t take it seriously!”

The issue of coronavirus vaccine in Iran has become a controversial topic for months. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic, banned the purchase of British and American vaccines in December 2020.

At the same time, the “Execution Headquarters of the Imam’s Decree,” which operates under the supervision of the leader of the Islamic Republic, launched extensive propaganda about the widespread production of the Iranian Barkat vaccine, and Kianosh Jahanpour was one of the officials of the Ministry of Health who played an extensive role in this propaganda.

However, the inability of this headquarters to mass-produce an effective vaccine and the prohibition of importing Western vaccines into Iran caused the death toll from coronavirus in Iran to increase sharply over the past month, until finally the leader of the Islamic Republic was forced to announce that vaccines should be provided by any means.

Currently, the Iranian government is mainly using Chinese Sinopharm vaccines and has attempted to reduce the death toll by accelerating the vaccination process.

Source: Radio Farda