Sept 16 Reuters - Iran's new government said the COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. firm Johnson Johnson on Thursday, a senior official said, as the Islamic Republic faces a fifth wave of infections.
The announcement came eight months after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned imports of vaccine manufactured by the United States and Britain - although Iran has accepted vaccines developed by Western firms but manufactured elsewhere.
The administration of Ebrahim Raisi is under public pressure to broaden its sources of vaccines as infections mount in the deadliest wave it has ever seen.
The single dose Corona vaccine has been approved, quoted as saying by Iranian media by Mohammad Reza Shanehsaz, the head of the Food and Drug Administration in Iran.
He did not mention where the vaccine would be produced or say about the ban.
Khamenei banned the government from importing COVID- 19 vaccines from United States and Britain, saying both countries were untrustworthy He later said the ban was on vaccines made in those countries.
Shanehsaz said that Russia s single-component Sputnik light vaccine had also been approved.
Fortunately, the basket of Corona vaccines reported in Iran is very long and diverse, he added.
Iran is trying to speed up vaccinations by using imported doses - including Sputnik V, the Covaxin manufactured by Bharat Biotech and the British-developed Oxford AstraZeneca shot produced by Brazil's R-Pharm group and AstraZeneca-SKBio in South Korea. Also, Iran has its own COVIran Barakat shot fired.
The Health Ministry says 13 million out of a population of 83 million have been fully inoculated.
The ministry on Thursday reported 18,021 new infections in the past 24 hours, bringing total cases to 5,378, 408 in Iran, the worst hit country in the Middle East.