Covid: 6th surge over; 7th surge awaited

March 25, 2022

          President Raisi regularly wears a facemask and socially distances and urges others to do so as well.  But his government has eschewed coercive measures; one of the few restrictions in place is a requirement for facemasks on public transport.

         The vaccination drive has largely stalled, with fewer than 50,000 a day getting a first shot in March and fewer than 45,000 getting a second shot.

Assuming a population of 85 million, 65.6 percent of the population is now “fully vaccinated,” meaning they have at least two shots.  That puts Iran 72nd among 221 countries and territories in the world.  That is almost the same as the United States, with 65.4 percent fully vaccinated, but well behind Canada at 81.4 percent and far, far behind the UAE with the world’s second-best ranking of 96.3 percent. (Gibraltar ranks first with almost 100 percent.)

          On March 5, Raisi told the Health Ministry to begin exporting Iranian-made vaccines—a major prestige point for the Islamic Republic.  However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has not approved any Iranian vaccines, so there isn’t likely to be much of an export market yet.

Iran’s Food and Drug Administration announced March 9 that 21 Iranian firms are now producing a total of 50 million does every month.  But Iran only needs 110 million doses more doses to give every Iranian, down to new-borns, three shots each, so the claimed capacity is far in excess of anything needed domestically and would require a huge volume of exports to pay the costs of setting up so many manufacturing lines.

The Health Ministry rates the country as having a rapidly declining threat from coronavirus with just 22 percent of all counties (shahrestans) rated as red, indicating the disease is raging.  The map as of March 12 showed 99 counties as red, 186 as high-risk orange and 154 as medium risk yellow.  Nine counties were rated as blue, indicating the disease was under control there.

The biggest news of the past month was that the Health Ministry had ordered 820,000 doses of vaccine sent back to Poland, which had given them free to Iran.  It turned out those AstraZeneca doses had been manufactured in the United States.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi last year banned any vaccines made in Britain or the United States, saying they couldn’t be trusted because those countries could be plotting to hurt Iranians.  Of course, since the vaccines had been bought by Poland, returning the shipments suggested Iran believes the Americans are out to harm Poles.

Globally, Iran’s volume of new cases reported daily in mid-March ranked Iran 35th in the world at that time.   In terms of the death rate per million population, Iran is rated 61st in the world.

The total number of cases reported daily is now around 6,000—still high but far below the peak of 38,000 at the beginning of February.

The number of covid deaths recorded daily was below 100 for months, then shot up to a high of 241 at the end of February but is now below 200.