Virus-ravaged Iran finds brief respite with mass vaccination

TEHRAN (AP):

As much of the world sees vaccination slowing and infections soaring with the spread of omicron, Iran has found a rare, if fleeting, respite from the anxiety and trauma of the pandemic.

After successive virus waves pummelled the country for nearly two years, belated mass vaccination under a new, hard-line president has, for a brief moment, left the stricken nation with a feeling of apparent safety.

Now, the spectre of an Omicron-fuelled surge looms large. Hospitals are preparing for the worst as infections tick upward after a monthslong lull. But so far, the variant has not battered the Islamic Republic as it has many Western countries where most adults got jabs a year ago.

Drastic infection surges among the inoculated from the United States to Russia have revealed the vaccine’s declining defences against infection even as its protection against hospitalisation and death remains strong. Meanwhile, Iranians have received doses more recently and are feeling off the hook with their immunity still robust.

“A large number of people already have contracted the virus and huge vaccination has taken place in recent months,” health official Moayed Alavian said in an attempt to explain the sharp drop in infections easing the burden on Iran’s overwhelmed health system.

The virus has killed over 132,000 people by Iran’s official count – the highest national toll in the Middle East.

Iran’s recently elected president, conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, has made it a mission to expedite imports of foreign-made COVID-19 vaccines. With hard-liners in control of all branches of government, the new administration is fast fulfilling a task that had been vexed by power struggles during former President Hassan Rouhani’s term.

The contrast is not lost on ordinary Iranians.

“I do not know what happened,” said Reza Ghasemi, a Tehran taxi driver. “Suddenly vaccination happened in a widespread and quick way after Raisi came to office.”

“By the way,” he added, “I am thankful.”

But sceptics question the presidents’ starkly different pandemic responses, criticising the human cost of the country’s factional rivalries.

“We delayed vaccination because of political issues,” reformist lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian bluntly said last September.

Former United States President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw America from Tehran’s landmark nuclear deal with world powers and pile on sanctions doomed the relatively moderate President Rouhani and his political camp.

Talks to revive the nuclear deal floundered over the past year, deepening mistrust of the West as hopes for quick sanctions relief faded.

With anti-American hostility simmering, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banned the import of Western shots a year ago. Hard-liners swept the parliament and railed against American-made vaccines even as virus deaths shattered records.

Scrambling to contain a vicious virus wave that inundated hospitals with intubated patients last summer, authorities urged Iranians to get one of the country’s five domestically produced shots instead of foreign alternatives.

Now under Raisi, Iran is riding high on its successes against COVID-19. Cases have fallen to about 7,000 a day from some 40,000 just months before. The death toll plummeted to 20 a day this month from peaks of over 700. His administration has provided 180 million vaccines since taking the reins in August. More than 88 per cent of all of those eligible for vaccines have been fully vaccinated.