Iran Starts Trial of New Homegrown Vaccine as Campaign Lags

An Iranian woman wears a protective mask to prevent contracting coronavirus, and she is seen at a drug store in Tehran on February 25, 2020. (Reuters)
An Iranian woman wears a protective mask to prevent contracting coronavirus, and she is seen at a drug store in Tehran on February 25, 2020. (Reuters)
TT
20

Iran Starts Trial of New Homegrown Vaccine as Campaign Lags

An Iranian woman wears a protective mask to prevent contracting coronavirus, and she is seen at a drug store in Tehran on February 25, 2020. (Reuters)
An Iranian woman wears a protective mask to prevent contracting coronavirus, and she is seen at a drug store in Tehran on February 25, 2020. (Reuters)

Iran's campaign to inoculate its population against the coronavirus and promote itself as an emerging vaccine manufacturer inched on as health authorities announced Tuesday that the country's third homegrown vaccine has reached the phase of clinical trials.

Details about its production, however, remained slim.

Although Iran, with a population of more than 80 million, has so far imported foreign vaccines from Russia, China, India and Cuba to cover over 1.2 million people, concerns over its lagging pace of vaccinations have animated Iran's drive to develop locally produced vaccines as wealthier nations snap up the lion’s share of vaccine doses worldwide.

Iranian scientists, like elsewhere in the world, are rushing to condense the typically years-long process to develop vaccines into a few months — a task that has acquired urgency as the country struggles to stem the worst virus outbreak in the region and its economy reels from harsh American sanctions.

But details are scant about the country’s vaccine production efforts. Two other Iranian vaccines are also in the phase of clinical trials, with the most advanced, called Barekat, tested on 300 people so far.

The government said 20,000 volunteers in the capital of Tehran and other cities will soon receive Iran's new vaccine, called Fakhra, which an official described to state-run media as being “100% safe,” without providing any evidence or data to support the claim. Earlier this week, the government launched a vaccine production factory it claims can make 3 million doses a day.

The vaccine introduced Tuesday on state TV was created by an affiliate of Iran's Defense Ministry, known as the Research and Innovation Organization.

Like with the Barekat vaccine still in the initial phase of clinical trials, the company used inactivated coronaviruses from 35,000 samples to make the new vaccine, a traditional technology based on cultivating batches of the virus and then killing it. By comparison, Western drug manufacturers are taking a newer gene-based approach to target the spikes on the outer structure of the coronavirus, a method that had never been approved for widespread use before.

Iran's fragmented approach to domestic vaccine production, with entities ranging from state-owned pharmaceutical conglomerates to the Defense Ministry working separately on at least six different vaccines, reflect the country's wider factional rivalries and competing power structures.

At a ceremony attended by high-ranking officials in Tehran on Tuesday, Iranian state TV broadcast footage of just a single volunteer receiving the Fakhra vaccine, named after chief Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in a November attack that Iran blamed on Israel.

While Fakhrizadeh was known to lead the country's disbanded nuclear weapons program in the early 2000s, Iran has eulogized him as a leader of country's domestic coronavirus vaccine development drive. Fakhrizadeh's son was the first to receive the jab of the new vaccine.

The coronavirus has infected more than 1.7 million people in Iran and killed 61,427, according to health ministry figures released Tuesday — the highest death toll in the region.

Iran formally launched its limited vaccination campaign last month, doling out Russia's Sputnik V vaccine to health workers and those with chronic health conditions. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has banned Iran from importing American and British vaccines, a reflection of its deep-rooted mistrust of the West.

Nonetheless, Iran later said it would receive 4.2 million doses of the vaccine developed by Oxford University and UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca through the global COVAX initiative, which was created to ensure that low- and middle-income countries have fair access to vaccines.

The Health Ministry has vowed to vaccinate all adults in the country by late September, although how the government will reach that ambitious goal remains uncertain. Iran says it expects to import doses for over 16 million people from COVAX.

The government has alleged that tough American sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2018 undermine efforts to purchase foreign-made vaccines and roll out mass inoculation campaigns like those making headway in the US and Europe. Although international banks and financial institutions often hesitate in dealing with Iranian transactions for fear of being fined or locked out of the American market, US sanctions do have specific carve-outs for medicine and humanitarian aid to Iran.



Large Russian Drone Attack Injures Civilians in Central Ukraine

Rescuers work at the site of a residential building damaged during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Dolynska, in Kirovohrad region, Ukraine, February 18, 2025. Head of Kirovohrad Regional Military Administration Andrii Raikovych via Telegram/Handout via REUTERS
Rescuers work at the site of a residential building damaged during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Dolynska, in Kirovohrad region, Ukraine, February 18, 2025. Head of Kirovohrad Regional Military Administration Andrii Raikovych via Telegram/Handout via REUTERS
TT
20

Large Russian Drone Attack Injures Civilians in Central Ukraine

Rescuers work at the site of a residential building damaged during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Dolynska, in Kirovohrad region, Ukraine, February 18, 2025. Head of Kirovohrad Regional Military Administration Andrii Raikovych via Telegram/Handout via REUTERS
Rescuers work at the site of a residential building damaged during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Dolynska, in Kirovohrad region, Ukraine, February 18, 2025. Head of Kirovohrad Regional Military Administration Andrii Raikovych via Telegram/Handout via REUTERS

A large-scale overnight Russian drone attack hit a residential building in the city of Dolynska in central Ukraine, injuring a mother and her two children and forcing evacuations from 38 apartments, a regional official said on Tuesday.
"A difficult night for the Kirovohrad region," Andriy Raikovych, the region's governor, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. "An enemy drone hit a high-rise building in Dolynska."
The mother and one of the children were taken to hospital, said Raikovych, who posted photos of flames bursting out of windows of a high-story apartment building.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that Russia launched 176 drones in a large-scale attack.
Ukraine's air force shot down 103 of the drones and 67 did not reach their targets, probably due to electronic countermeasures, the military said.
According to Reuters, it did not specify what happened to the remaining six drones, but said that Kirovohrad, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Cherkasy regions were impacted.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said that drone debris fell in one of the districts of the capital, causing a fire at an industrial enterprise.
Reuters could not independently verify the report. There was no immediate comment from Russia.
Both Moscow and Kyiv deny targeting civilians in the war, which Russia started with its full-scale invasion on Ukraine nearly three years ago. But thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
The attack took place as top Russian and US officials are meeting in Saudi Arabia for talks - without the participation of Kyiv or its European allies - on how to end the war in Ukraine.