The 150,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine ready for delivery to Iranians will remain in the boxes.

Scientists from Iran and living in the United States had wanted to ship these doses to their homeland "but the shipment was canceled" given the decision of the Supreme Leader, said the Iranian Red Crescent, quoted Friday 8 January by several local media.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday banned the import of any anti-Covid-19 vaccine from the United States and the United Kingdom, believing that these could be used to "contaminate" his country.

"We can absolutely not trust them. It is not impossible that they want to contaminate other nations," said the Iranian Supreme Leader in a tweet in English, deleted just hours after its publication by the platform as part of its policy to combat "false or misleading information" on vaccines against Covid-19.

The Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca / Oxford vaccines which have been authorized or are about to be authorized in the European Union and the United Kingdom are therefore banned from Iran.

And French vaccines, still in development, will not be welcome either.

"Given our experience with French blood contaminated with HIV, French vaccines are not trustworthy either", added Ali Khamenei in his message, referring to the health scandal of contaminated blood that affected France in the 1980s. 1990.

Several hundred people had been infected in Iran by the AIDS virus in the 1980s with French blood transfusion sets.

Following in the footsteps of the number one of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian president in turn accused "foreign companies" of wanting to "test" their vaccines on the Iranian population.

"The health ministry prevented them from doing so," Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address on Saturday.

"Our people will not serve as guinea pigs for the vaccine companies," he said.

"We need to buy safe foreign vaccines."

British variant detected in Iran

But in Iran, the situation is pressing.

The state is the most affected in the Near and Middle East, with more than 56,000 deaths out of 1.2 million people infected with the coronavirus according to official figures, for a country of nearly 80 million inhabitants.

The authorities themselves admit that these statistics are grossly underestimated.

A race against time begins, especially since the British variant of Covid-19 has been detected on Iranian soil.

"Unfortunately, we have found the first British Covid-19 case transferred to a dear compatriot who had returned from England ... and who was admitted to one of our private hospitals," the Minister of Health said on Tuesday, Saeed Namaki.

That same day, Iran recorded its lowest number of daily deaths in almost seven months, with 98 deaths linked to Covid-19.

Since the end of December, the country has extended a nighttime curfew to hundreds of low-risk cities to keep the number of new infections and deaths down.

The curfew prohibits in particular the use of the car, in order to reduce contact between people.

Bypass US sanctions

Without American and European vaccines, Iran intends to rely on its Russian and Chinese allies.

"A million doses of vaccine should be delivered to the Red Crescent [from] perhaps Russia, China or India," said the international medical organization on Friday.

Supporting Iran's strategy, Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour explained on January 1 that the first batch of vaccine would likely be purchased directly from a foreign country.

"Then Iran will receive its share of Covax vaccines [an initiative sponsored by the World Health Organization aimed at guaranteeing rapid and equitable access to anti-Covid-19 vaccines, editor's note], then the Institut Pasteur of Iran will co-produce a vaccine with a Cuban company, and finally, the vaccine will be produced locally, "he detailed.

Some 16.8 million doses of the Covax vaccine have already been prepaid by Iran, according to Central Bank Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati.

However, the transfer to Switzerland of the sums due to the WHO required a complex banking arrangement in order to bypass the American sanctions, he said.

In recent weeks, Tehran has complained that it cannot buy its Covid-19 vaccines abroad due to these sanctions which, according to the Iranian authorities, lead to a blocking of transactions at the time of payment.

The WHO, however, has repeatedly assured that the supply of Covax vaccines would not be hampered, including by US sanctions.

"We are supporting and helping Iran to procure essential items on the global market, and we have been doing so since the start of the pandemic, as we predicted that the supply of medicines would be affected by the sanctions," he said. Christoph Hamelmann, WHO Representative in Iran.

He also said that the member states of the Covax initiative, including Iran, will jointly decide on the brand of vaccine each country should purchase.

Cuban and Iranian researchers associated to develop a vaccine

For the development of its own vaccine, the Islamic Republic has joined forces with Cuba.

The authorities announced that the first phase of clinical trial, which had been launched in early January, had been successful.

According to the Ministry of Health, the national vaccine could therefore be ready "at the end of spring 2021 at the latest".

In the meantime, on the Iranian black market but also among drug wholesalers, fake vaccines are circulating, which does not fail to worry the authorities.

They called for vigilance and warned that any product bearing the label "coronavirus vaccine", whether sold at wholesalers or on the web, was "fake", illegal and extremely dangerous, as it could lead to serious health complications and even death.

The health ministry urged the population not to use drugs or products that have not been imported through official channels.

With AFP

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