Amir Abdollahian: Last week, we were gifted "two million" vaccines; we will give them to Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan

The Islamic Republic's Foreign Minister announced on Sunday, January 9, that a country gifted Iran "two million doses of vaccine" last week, which Tehran will send to Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian did not announce the name of the country donating the vaccine, but Iran stopped importing foreign vaccines on November 4, and since then, according to official information, Italy has donated one million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Iran.

Customs spokesman Seyed Ruhollah Latifi also said on January 4 that two shipments of 2.4 million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine had entered the country.

In his remarks on Sunday, the Iranian foreign minister said: "Last week, a country offered to send two million doses of the vaccine to Iran. Health Ministry officials announced that the warehouses were full and it was not possible to receive it. We accepted the gift and will use the surplus in the region, including Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan."

Mr. Amir Abdollahian's statements about the fullness of the warehouses come at a time when many Iranians are waiting to receive the third dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and the government has asked people to use domestic vaccines for this dose.

According to customs statistics, Iran has so far imported more than 152 million doses of foreign vaccines, 88% of which were Sinopharm vaccines, but 13 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines, mostly donated by other countries, have also entered the country.

The import of 152.5 million doses of vaccines comes while, according to official statistics from the Ministry of Health, less than 122 million doses of domestic and foreign vaccines have been administered in the country as of Sunday, January 9.

Iranian officials have not yet reported what they have done with the remaining imported vaccines, but there have been numerous reports of the Islamic Republic of Iran vaccinating members of Lebanon's Hezbollah and other militants in the region.

Source: Radio Farda