"It is feared that we are on the way to a fifth wave throughout the country," Rouhani told a gathering of Iran's anti-virus taskforce.
The Iranian health ministry has classified the capital and nine other cities in Tehran province as “red”, the very best category on the country’s coronavirus risk scale. The southern and southeastern provinces of Fars, Hormozgan, Kerman and Sistan-Baluchistan have also been classified as "red".
The outgoing president warned the general public to take care as "the Delta variant has spread" in southern provinces. consistent with the health ministry, only 1.7 million people in Iran are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, leaving the country highly susceptible to new coronavirus waves driven by more deadly and transmissible variants.
"God willing, things will improve in terms of vaccinations from next week," Rouhani said.
Iran is administering two locally produced vaccines under emergency use authorization because the country’s vaccination procurement has been hit by the sanctions imposed by the us . The US sanctions have made it difficult for Iran, which is struggling to import vaccines for its population, to transfer money to foreign firms.
On Friday, World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the planet is witnessing a really “dangerous period” because the Delta variant continues to evolve and mutate. The highly transmissible Delta variant, first detected in India, is rapidly spreading in many countries, and therefore the WHO has warned about the scenes of hospitals overflowing with patients in countries with low vaccination coverage.
