Iran says home-made vaccine is safe, volunteers showed no adverse reaction
Iranian health ministry officials say a home-made vaccine meant to tackle the COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus pandemic, has proven safe after a first trial on volunteers showed they had no serious adverse reaction to the jab.
Ehsan Shamsi Koushki, who serves as secretary of the committee on medical ethics in the Iranian health ministry, said on Saturday that his department had allowed COVIRAN Barekat, the Iranian vaccine candidate that started its official human trial last month, be tested on seven more individuals in a third round of the probe.
“Those seven individuals who were injected with the first dose of the vaccine had no serious side effects,” said Shamsi Koushki, adding that the new group of volunteers will get the shot in their arms within the next 28 days.
The announcement came as Iran scrambles to launch a nationwide vaccination program to tackle one of the largest outbreaks of COVID-19 in the Middle East region.
Health ministry officials said on Saturday that they will start the third and final trial phase for a Cuban-Iranian vaccine in the next three months.
Cuban officials announced on Friday that they had signed an agreement with Iranian counterparts to transfer the technology for one of their most advanced coronavirus vaccine candidates.
Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute will collaborate with Iran’s Pasteur Institute to run human trials for the vaccine in Iran.
To further expand its vaccination program, Iran has placed orders to purchase nearly 17 million doses of a vaccine being developed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The purchase had faced payment issues over US sanctions on Iran although officials said earlier this weeks that they had found a way round the sanctions to transfer the payment to the WHO agent in Switzerland.
Iran reports further drop in annual inflation rate in December
D-8’s role in Iran’s economy after Cairo summit
Iran’s mining, metals exports at $8.8bn in Apr-Nov
VIDEO | Yemenis praise the military for its successful operations against Israel
VIDEO | Israel continues to bomb Gaza homes
VIDEO | An insider's view of the country: Meybod City in Yazd
‘All wars have rules. All of those rules have been broken’ by Israel
VIDEO | Report flags India’s violation of rights of Rohingya detainees
Turkey's foreign minister meets Syria's de facto leader in Damascus
VIDEO | US Syria plots
'Next to impossible' to rescue patients from Gaza's Kamal Adwan Hospital: Director
PressTV NEWSLETTER
now
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website
