TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran on Thursday received its first batch of coronavirus vaccines made abroad, as the country struggles to contain the worst pandemic outbreak in the Middle East.
The shipment consists of 500,000 doses of Russian Sputnik V vaccines that arrived at Moscow’s Tehran Imam Khomeieni International Airport, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Iranian state TV also quoted Tehran’s ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, as saying that Iran had ordered 5 million doses from Russia. The next batches are due to arrive on February 18 and 28, said Jalali.
However, a report by the semi-official ISNA news agency appeared to contradict Jalali’s statement and the Fars report. ISNA quoted Mohammadreza Shanehsaz, head of Iran’s food and drug organization, as saying Thursday’s shipment included only 10,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine.
The conflicting reports could not be reconciled immediately. Shanehsaz also said that Iran bought 2 million naps, not 5 million.
Last month, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned Iran from importing American vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech and Astrazeneca from Britain, a reflection of distrust of the West.
The coronavirus has already infected more than 1.4 million people in Iran and killed more than 58,000.
In December, Iran began testing a human-made vaccine in Iran and said it hopes to distribute it in the spring, an extremely aggressive schedule. Before this year’s accelerated development of coronavirus vaccines, the usual methods of testing a vaccine for safety and effectiveness with mass trials could take up to a decade.
The country has also started work on a joint vaccine with Cuba. It is also planning to import about 17 million doses of the COVAX vaccine and millions of other countries. But Iran is struggling to transfer about $ 220 million in South Korean banks to pay for COVID-19 vaccines through COVAX, an international program created to distribute coronavirus vaccines to participating countries.
The government in Tehran has praised Iran’s domestic vaccine research, repeatedly claiming that harsh American sanctions undermine its efforts to buy vaccines made abroad and launch mass vaccination campaigns like those underway in the US and Europe. Although U.S. sanctions have specific restrictions on drugs and humanitarian aid to Iran, international banks and financial institutions are hesitant to negotiate with Iranian transactions for fear of being fined or excluded from the American market.