TEHRAN – There is a diversity of coronavirus vaccine being produced in Iran, so that the country has the capacity to export part of the products, Mohammad Reza Shanehsaz, head of the Food and Drug Administration, said on Wednesday.

The country’s potentiality in the pharmaceutical sector is so great that every medicine which was introduced to be effective on the coronavirus was produced inside the country within less than three months, he added, IRNA reported.

“Test kits and ventilators were also produced and the last measure was the production of vaccines,” he noted.

Currently, 11 knowledge-based companies are working on the five vaccine production methods which are being practiced around the world, he explained.

Shanehsaz went on to say that the first batch of the Russian-made vaccine, Sputnik V, will be imported in the coming days. Iran is the sixteenth country that has ordered to buy the vaccine, he added.

In January 2019, Shanehsaz said that the Iranian pharmaceutical industry and scientists are capable of producing any kind of medicine over a two-year period.

Health Minister Saeed Namaki said in December 2019 that some 97 percent of the whole medicine consumed in the country is produced domestically and only 3 percent is imported.

COVIRAN BAREKAT, the first coronavirus vaccine made by Iranian researchers of the Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam, was unveiled and injected into three volunteers during a ceremony on December 29, 2020.

President Hassan Rouhani has said the government is trying its best to start mass vaccination against the coronavirus by the next two months with the priority given to medical staff and high-risk individuals.

Kianoush Jahanpour, a spokesman for Iran's Food and Drug Administration, has said that Iran and Cuba have formed a ‘strategic alliance’ through working jointly on a project for producing a potential coronavirus vaccine.

He touched on an agreement signed by the Pasteur Institute of Iran and the Finlay Institute of Cuba which allows the two countries to move faster toward realizing the goal of ‘immunization against coronavirus’.

MG