TEHRAN – A total of 5,730,576 students, equaling 90 percent of the target group aged 12 to 18 nationwide, have received the first doses of coronavirus vaccine, Azam Goudarzi, a health ministry official, said on Tuesday.

To date, 35 percent of the students aged 12 to 18 have received both doses of the vaccine, she added, IRNA reported.

Some 6.3 million students across the country should be inoculated to gain immunity against the virus, she noted.

In the capital city of Tehran, 38.66 percent of students have received the second dose, she said.

With the decline in COVID-19 cases, schools are gradually reopened with a delay of one month or two under health protocols.

Students in tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades attended schools on Saturday, while students in seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, as well as elementary students, will go to school from November 22.

All educational centers in Iran have been closed since February 2020.

In order for students to keep in touch with their studies, the Ministry of Education launched a homegrown mobile application on April 9, called SHAD, providing students with distance learning programs. More than 60 percent of students and 94 percent of teachers attended 64 percent of classes through the SHAD app, whose acronym in Persian translates as the Students Education Network.

Moreover, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) also began to broadcast televised educational programs on a daily basis after school closures.

Due to the vaccination and the reduction of transmission, schools are gradually reopened since September, and about 15 million students across the country can benefit from face-to-face education with strict observance of health protocols during school hours.

FB/MG