TEHRAN – The spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday outlined plans to accelerate imports of vaccines for the coronavirus.
Saeed Khatibzadeh said his ministry held a meeting on August 26 between the new health minister and ranking diplomats of the foreign ministry during which a raft of “good decisions” were made about accelerating imports of COVID-19 vaccines.
The results of the meeting will be known to the public in the coming weeks, he said without elaboration.
On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said a special headquarters has been set up at the foreign ministry to speed up imports of the coronavirus vaccine.
The new foreign minister said facilitating imports of COVID-19 vaccines is his first priority, adding that all of the country’s embassies abroad will contribute to the efforts.
On Monday, the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in Iran surpassed 107,000 after more than 669 patients lost their lives in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said.
The ministry recorded 33,780 new COVID-19 cases, of whom 4,918 were hospitalized. The new cases raised the overall number of Iranians having contracted the virus to more than 4,960,700.
Last Tuesday, reported a record daily 709 deaths from COVID-19 as the country faced a fifth surge in infections led by the highly contagious Delta variant.
Authorities imposed a two-week road travel ban between cities in the Islamic Republic until Aug. 27, except for essential vehicles.
Health authorities have warned that daily deaths might reach 800 in coming weeks if Iranians fail to respect health precautions.
Social media users have criticized the former government for being slow to vaccinate people – only about 6.5 million of the 83 million population are fully inoculated. Officials have blamed U.S. sanctions and delays in importing vaccines.
Food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are exempt from U.S. sanctions reimposed on Tehran in 2018 after President Donald Trump walked away from a 2015 deal between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program.
But the U.S. measures, which target sectors including oil and financial activities, have deterred foreign banks from processing financial transactions with Iran. Tehran says this has frequently disrupted efforts to import essential medicines and other humanitarian items.