Heena Sharma Blog

  Iran has kicked off the final stage of the clinical trial of its domestic Covid-19 vaccine as two volunteers were inoculated, semi-official Mehr news agency reported. "Phase 1 was successfully completed with 56 volunteers, and today phases 2 and 3 of the clinical trial began," director of the clinical trial centre at Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) Hamed Hosseini said on Monday. The receivers of the COV-Iran Barekat vaccine were two lecturers at TUMS. Iran has so far reported a total of 1,754,933 coronavirus cases and 61,330 deaths. At least 1,499,301 Covid-19 patients have recovered, but 3,839 others remain in critical condition, according to official figures. Read More

  Iran will start receiving doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in February via the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) platform, Minister of Health and Medical Education Saeed Namaki announced. "AstraZeneca informed us the night before last that it will start delivering 4.2 million doses in February within the framework of COVAX," Namaki said in a video announcement on Wednesday. Namaki also said that Iran's Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute has been authorised to start clinical trials of its vaccine candidate, and they will hopefully start the trials next week. At her daily briefing, spokeswoman for the ministry, Sima Sadat Lari, said 6,870 new Covid-19 cases were detected in the past 24 hours, raising the country's overall count to 1,438,286 infections. Of the newly infected, she noted, 701 had to be hospitalised. Read More

Iran's Revolutionary Guard said Thursday it had shot down a US "spy drone" over its territory after it violated Iranian airspace, according to Iranian state television. "The US-made Global Hawk surveillance drone was brought down by its Air Force" in the country's southern coastal province of Hormozgan, the Revolutionary Guard added, according to the English-language Press TV. Article Source -> Business Standard

   The decision to violate and withdraw from the Iran anti-nuclear  deal is one of the most dangerous foreign policy blunders in recent  memory International News : President Trump’s decision to violate and withdraw from the Iran anti-nuclear deal   is one of the most dangerous foreign policy blunders in recent memory, setting the stage for a war that one analyst has noted could “make the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts look like a walk in the park.” The decision to go back on a U.S. commitment to a deal that even U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Joseph Votel and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have acknowledged were working is the ultimate unforced error, and the potential consequences could not be more dire. Donald Trump is crowing about keeping his promise to scuttle the deal, but this is one promise that should never have been made. The results of yesterday’s decision could include a greater chance that Iran will decide to acquire a nuclear weapon, along with a real possib