With huge national fanfare, Iran rolled out its Covid-19 vaccine campaign with a television broadcast of the health minister’s son receiving Russia’s Sputnik V jab. “My father would not have let me have this vaccine if there was any problem with it,” said Parsa Namaki, the son of health minister Saeed Namaki and a student in Iran’s top engineering school. “I insisted,” he added, “in case it can have any impact to help build public trust. ”
With 58,469 deaths from coronavirus, Iran has the highest death toll of any country in the Middle East and many in the Islamic republic are desperate for vaccines. But despite the televised vaccinations of high-profile people, there is scepticism about
Tehran’s strategy, which has been complicated by geopolitics. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has refused vaccines from the US or UK, voicing suspicions about western drugs being trialled on Iranian citizens. The ban on western-produced inoculations prompted a backlash from doctors and on social media, as did the reliance on vaccines from Moscow.
Russia’s Sputnik V jab has been shown to have 91.6 per cent efficacy against coronavirus, a Lancet peer review has confirmed. But about 100 members of Iran’s Medical Council said last week that choosing the Russian vaccine was “unjustifiable and risky” and called on the government to buy the world’s “best vaccines”.
The theocratic state, which is already immunising medical staff with the Russian jab, says that it is. It plans to source about a third of its needs from Russia, China and India as well as from the World Health Organization’s Covax programme for poorer countries, which does use western vaccines. The remaining two-thirds will come from Iranian producers.