Official: No Side-Effects Witnessed in Iran-Made Coronavirus Vaccine Test Individuals

Head of Iran’s Headquarters for Executing the Order of Imam (EIKO) Mohammad Mokhber said on Tuesday that the volunteers who have received the country’s home-made coronavirus vaccine in the human trial phase have shown no side-effect yet.

Addressing a ceremony to unveil a number of home-made medicine produced by Barekat Foundation, Mokhber said that several people across the world have died after injection of the coronavirus vaccines produced by foreign companies.

“This is while the Iranian vaccine already tested on 14 volunteers has produced no side-effects until this moment,” he said.

“Given the laboratory research on this type of vaccine and the positive assessments of scientific aspects, the country will no doubt mass-produce the vaccine and we will grow self-sufficient in this regard,” Mokhber said.

Earlier today, Mokhber said that the country will mass-produce its domestically developed coronavirus vaccine within the next 3 months, adding that the third phase of testing the home-made vaccine on volunteers will be performed today.

“The volunteers (who received the Iran-made coronavirus vaccine) are in good conditions and today the third stage of injection will kick off. If this process continues, we will reach production of 12mln to 14mln doses of Iran-made vaccine in the next 3 months,” Mokhber told reporters in Karaj city near Tehran.

He also underlined mass-production of masks in Iran, and said, “We are now witnessing that a sum of 100mln pieces of masks have been stored in the country’s warehouses with a similar conditions for ventilators.”

Mokhber further noted his nation’s rapid progress which has placed Iran in control of the disease, saying that the country is now producing 97% of its needed medicine and has managed to mass-produce coronavirus diagnosis kits.

Head of Pasteur Institute of Iran Alireza Biglari said on Monday that the country’s home-made vaccines will be ready for the nation’s vaccination late in spring if they pass all tests successfully.

“The Health Ministry is trying to provide the necessary vaccines from foreign sources for priority groups; also, really good efforts are being made to produce domestically-produced vaccines and co-produce them with other countries,” Biglari said.

“But regarding the domestically-produced vaccines, the most optimistic case is that we can have the domestically-produced vaccines for public vaccination in June if all plans succeed,” he added.

Biglari explained that Iran’s vaccine produced jointly with foreign states will go for extensive human trial phase in March, while public vaccination could start in June.

Biglari had said on Sunday that the vaccine made at Iran’s Razi Serum and Vaccine Research Institute will enter the clinical trial phase in coming weeks.

Biglari said in a televised program that the COVID-19 vaccine produced by the researchers of Razi Institute will soon enter the clinical phase, adding, “With the success of Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute in animal experiments for the recombinant anti-coronavirus vaccine, approval of the Medical Ethics Committee [of Iran’s Health Ministry] was issued for this vaccine.”

“The vaccine will enter the first phase of a clinical trial in the coming weeks, based on which, a limited number of volunteers will be tested for safety of this vaccine and then it will enter the next phase,” he added.

“So far, no special side effects have been observed from the COVIRAN Barekat vaccines.”

An official of Tehran Medical Sciences University announced on Saturday that a fourth group of volunteers will start going under clinical tests following the success of the COVIRAN Barekat vaccine in the previous phases and after the first three groups showed no side-effects.

Doctor Hamed Hosseini said the 4th group, consisting of 7 volunteers, will most likely join the clinical trial January 19.

He went on to say that as experiments have proved satisfactory, the dose of the vaccine can increase to 5 micrograms from the previous 3 micrograms.

The first three Iranian volunteers received their second dose of domestically produced COVID-19 vaccine last week.

The second dose of the home-grown COVID-19 vaccine (COVIRAN Barekat) was injected to the first three volunteers who had received their first dose on December 29, 2020.

As the Iranian vaccine COVIRAN Barekat has had no side effects after 14 days, the committee for supervising the vaccine has issued the permit for the second phase of injection.

The Headquarters for Executing the Order of Imam Khomeini (EIKO) is the organization that has developed the vaccine.

The first three test subjects were the daughter of head of the Coronavirus Research Team of EIKO, Tayyebeh Mokhber, and two of the top managers of the organization, Ali Asgari, and Hamid Reza Khalili.

EIKO was enlisted as a sanctioned entity by the US on Thursday, surprising the academic community and human rights activists.