Iran capable of vaccinating 20m people a month: Official

Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi ensured on Sunday that there was no concerns on fast vaccination as the country’s health network has capability to vaccine 20 million people a month.

Speaking in an event to honor healthcare workers, Deputy for Health in the Ministry of Health and Medical Education said that Iran’s health network, founded 30 years ago by great healthcare figures, is a strong point that reaches across the country so that no village with over 1,000 people population is deprived of the health network.

In addition to Health Houses – small local health centers, Raisi said, there are over 2,500 medical centers in cities and countryside and the centers are all connected to hospitals and specialized centers.

These centers in health network managed to carry out three rounds of COVID-19 screening across the country and it is now extending to nomad population, according to the Deputy Minister.

He also underlined that the health network will upgrade from primary healthcare to universal health coverage system (UHC); the transmission is now in pilot phase.

Several COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing projects have been developed in Iran and some of them have undergone clinical test.

Iran has also afforded coronavirus vaccine from Russia and China and started to carry out vaccination among healthcare workers, the elderly and those with underlying conditions.