TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran is soon expected to receive its first batch of foreign vaccines against the coronavirus from the World Health Organization-led Covid-19 vaccine procurement and distribution initiative, the COVAX Facility, the IRNA news agency reported on Monday, citing an official.
According to Mostafa Ghaneie, the head of the country’s Scientific Committee of Coronavirus Combat and Prevention Headquarters, the COVAX vaccines will be delivered to Iran in the next few weeks.
Minoo Mohraz, a member of the national Covid-19 task force, said the first group of Iranians will be inoculated in the coming days with vaccines imported from Sweden.
"This vaccine is imported from Sweden and has been approved by Iran. It is not a Moderna vaccine, nor the Cuban vaccine which has not yet passed its final phase,” Tabnak news website quoted her as saying.
President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday that Covid-19 vaccinations will begin in the coming weeks in Iran. "Foreign vaccines are a necessity until local vaccines are available,” Rouhani said in televised remarks.
Daily Covid-19 deaths have fallen to a low of more than seven months, with officials announcing that there are no more high-risk "red cities” in the country.
Earlier this month, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei banned the government from importing vaccines from the United States and Britain, saying they are possibly seeking to spread the infection to other countries.
Rouhani himself, in compliance with Ayatollah Khamenei’s order, said at the time that his government would purchase "safe foreign vaccines.”
Iran launched human trials of its first domestic vaccine candidate late last month, saying this could help it defeat the pandemic despite U.S. sanctions
 that affect its ability to import vaccines.
"There have been good movements in the field of local and foreign vaccines,” Rouhani said, adding that three domestic vaccines - Barekat, Pasteur and Razi, some of which have been developed with foreign collaboration - could begin in the spring and summer.
Cuba said earlier this month that it had signed an accord with Tehran to transfer the technology for its most advanced coronavirus vaccine candidate and carry out last-stage clinical trials of the shot in Iran.
Tehran and Havana are under tough U.S. sanctions that while they exempt medicine often deter foreign pharmaceutical companies from trading with them.
The country has recorded nearly 1.37 million cases and more than 57,400 deaths, according to government data, but there has been a decline in new infections in recent weeks. Iran recorded 98 deaths in the 24 hours to Sunday, the health ministry said.