Second consignment of Russian-made Sputnik-V vaccines arrives in Iran: Ministry

The second consignment of Russian-made Sputnik-V vaccines developed to curb the COVID-19 contagious disease has arrived in Iran earlier than originally planned, the country's Health Ministry says.

Kianoush Jahanpour, the ministry's head of the public relations and information center, announced on his official Twitter account on Friday that the new batch had just arrived in the Islamic Republic.

“Moments earlier, the second shipment of Sputnik vaccine, including 100,000 doses of the vaccine, arrived in Tehran a few days ahead of schedule,” he tweeted.

“After labeling and coding in the [Tracing, Tracking and Authentication Control] TTAC system, this consignment will be distributed in the country's health network for the vaccination of frontline health workers,” Jahanpour added.

Sputnik-V has proven efficient in curing the potentially fatal respiratory disease in 91.6 percent of the cases. The effectiveness of the vaccine, therefore, ranks as high as those produced by American pharmaceutical giants Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna or AstraZeneca, a similar British company.

The first shipment of the said vaccine arrived in Tehran on February 4. The second batch had been scheduled to be imported on February 18, and the third consignment has been planned to be received on February 28.

According to health officials, the first stage of the imports is to see the arrival of 500,000 doses of the vaccine in the country.

MG