Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says Iran hopes to start buying and start co-production of the picture ‘soon’.
Iran has approved Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and plans to both import and export it, providing the country with the worst country in the Middle East to fight against the spread of COVID- 19, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.
“Yesterday ‘s Sputnik V vaccine was registered and approved by our health authorities,” Zarif said at a meeting with his Russian group, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow on Tuesday.
“Soon, we hope to be able to buy it, as well as start co-production.”
Tehran had previously said it would wait for World Health Organization approval for the Russian injection before buying it.
Iran has also said it will only rely on vaccines made by Russia, India or China, while also working to produce a home bullet.
Earlier this month, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s top authority, blocked the government from importing vaccines from the United States and the United Kingdom, he said. e, in the absence of evidence, may be attempting to spread the disease to other countries.
Twitter removed a post from Khamenei’s account that said U.S. and UK vaccines were “completely unreliable”, saying the post violated the platform’s rules against misinformation.
Russia recorded the bullet – named after a Soviet-era satellite – last August, before large-scale clinical trials began, leaving some experts to monitor it.
Sputnik V developers have since said the vaccine is more than 90 percent effective and several countries outside Russia have started administering it, Argentina among them.
Russia last week filed for Sputnik V registration in the European Union, while a Hungarian member broke ranks and bought two million doses of the injection before the bloc approved it.
Message to Biden
Meanwhile, an Iranian government urged new U.S. President Joe Biden to lift sanctions they said were hindering Tehran’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
“From [Biden’s] Administration claims that it is not against science like the one before … one expects to free Iran’s own foreign exchange facilities to fight the fight against the crown virus and for health and well-being. food, and swiftly lifting banking sanctions, ”Ali Rabiei said on state television.
Sanctions imposed by former U.S. President Donald Trump have been formally issued releasing food, medicine and other humanitarian products, but many foreign banks have been barred from doing business with Iran.
Iran has recorded more than 1.38 million cases of coronavirus and 57,560 deaths since the uprising began, according to government data Tuesday, but there has been a decline in new diseases in recent weeks.
Rabiei also threatened that Iran would suspend brief -ing investigations of Iran’s nuclear facilities by the United Nations atomic group if the U.S. does not lift sanctions.
In 2018, President Trump withdrew the U.S. nuclear deal from Iran in 2015 with world powers aimed at restricting its nuclear program, and lifted sanctions by the USA raised under the agreement.