Iran forms committee to oversee development of COVID-19 vaccine

Iran’s Health Minister Saeed Namaki announced the creation of a special national committee charged with overseeing the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

According to Tasnim News Agency, in a decree on Thursday, the minister tapped Dr. Mohammad Mahdi Gooya, the head of the Health Ministry's Communicable Diseases Center, to lead the panel, which will be tasked with cooperating with all scientific centers and knowledge-based firms in Iran to facilitate the creation of a vaccine for the viral infection.

He also assigned Dr. Alireza Biglari, the Director of the Pasteur Institute of Iran, Seyyed Mahmoud Masiha Hashemi, Assistant Professor at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Dr. Seyyed Alireza Hosseini, an associate professor of exercise physiology, and Dr. Ehsan Shamsi Gooshki, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Medical Ethics Department, Faculty Member, as member of the committee.

On August 12, Namaki said a number of vaccines for the novel coronavirus being developed inside the country had successfully passed the human tests and were ready for clinical trial.

Recently, President Hassan Rouhani called on the Health Ministry to make all the arrangements necessary for the purchase of vaccines so far developed by other countries against COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of people infected with coronavirus in Iran has surpassed 380,746 and the death toll has exceeded 21,900.

SS