Covid-19: Iran wary of Delta returning from Turkey

TEHRAN – The Delta variant of coronavirus may return to Iran from certain neighboring countries, such as Turkey, an official with the national scientific committee to combat coronavirus has warned.

“In Turkey, the Delta accounts for three percent of the existing variants. So, there is a concern that subvariants such as XD and XF may return to the country considering travels and transactions between the two countries,” ISNA quoted Hamidreza Jama’ati as saying on Monday.

In March, a member of the National Headquarters for Coronavirus Control, had warned people should not travel to the regional countries, including Kuwait, Egypt, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates. For the time being, the BA.2 Omicron is the main subvariant in the country, he said, adding, that it is unlikely to face another wave of the virus until autumn this year.

Omicron is made up of several sublineages, each of them being monitored by WHO and partners. Of them, the most common ones are BA.1, BA.1.1 (or Nextstrain clade 21K), and BA.2 (or Nextstrain clade 21L).

In March, Masoud Mardani, a member of the National Headquarters for Coronavirus Control, had warned of a sublineage of Omicron variant, codenamed BA.2, which is highly probable to spread during the two-week Noruz holidays (started March 21).

“People should not travel to the regional countries, including Kuwait, Egypt, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates,” he stressed.

On Sunday, the daily death toll from the coronavirus in the country plunged once again to below 15 after around 26 months.

The figures released by the Iranian Health Ministry indicated that the total deaths from COVID-19 in the country reached 140,975, as the pandemic has taken the lives of 13 patients.

Moreover, 528 new cases of COVID-19 infection were reported, with 136 of them hospitalized, the ministry added.

Iran is the sixth country in the world and the first country in West Asia to gain the ability to produce the coronavirus vaccine.

Considering that five coronavirus vaccines have so far been produced domestically, Mohammad Reza Shanehsaz, the former head of the Food and Drug Administration, said in June 2021 that Iran is one of the few countries that has all vaccine production platforms.

A total of 21 knowledge-based companies are operating to produce 50 million doses of vaccine monthly and 600 million doses annually, IRNA quoted Bahram Daraei as saying on March 9.

MG