Iran unveiled its second homemade coronavirus vaccine project on Monday, the day before the launch of a vaccination campaign to combat the most deadly Covid-19 outbreak in the Middle East.
“We will begin testing on humans in the next few days, or at most within a week,” Massoud Soleimani, a member of Iran’s national vaccine committee, told reporters in Karaj, near Tehran.
The vaccine, dubbed Razi Cov Pars, was developed at the Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, which is linked to the ministry of agriculture, said Soleimani.
At the start of Phase 1 of the clinical trials, “13 volunteers aged 18 to 55” will receive a jab, he added.
The revelation comes a day before the launch, on Tuesday, of a campaign to vaccinate Iran’s more than 80 million inhabitants, starting with the injection of Sputnik V, according to Health Minister Saeed Namaki.
The first doses of the Russian vaccine arrived in Tehran on Thursday, with two more shipments scheduled for February 18 and 28, according to Iranian officials.
The Islamic Republic has bought two million doses of Sputnik V, Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour told AFP on Saturday.
Namaki said last week that Iran will also receive 4.2 million doses of the vaccine developed by the Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, acquired through the international vaccine mechanism Covax.
The coronavirus killed more than 58,500 people and infected 1.4 million in Iran, according to the health ministry.
The Islamic Republic started clinical trials of its first locally developed vaccine in late December.
ap / kam / sw / pair