A woman wearing a face mask crosses a street in Tehran
TEHERAN, Dec 18 (NNN-Xinhua) — Iran reported 7,453 new COVID-19 cases, taking the tally to 1,138,530 in the country so far, according to the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education’s website.
Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for the ministry, said at her daily briefing on Thursday that 1,147 of the new infected had to be hospitalized.
The epidemic has claimed 53,095 lives in Iran, after 212 new deaths related to COVID-19 were registered between Wednesday and Thursday, Lari noted.
A total of 856,513 patients have recovered or been released from Iranian hospitals, while 5,645 others are currently in critical condition, she added.
As of Thursday, 6,896,651 laboratory tests for the virus have been carried out in Iran, the spokeswoman noted.
Currently, the risk of infection remains high in 12 Iranian counties flagged with a red alert, while 288 counties remain in orange alert, and 148 others are at yellow level.
On Thursday, Head of the Public Relations and Information Center of Iran’s Ministry of Health Kianush Jahanpur said that judging from the current progress of nine medical projects inside Iran, a new locally-developped vaccine for COVID-19 should be available in next spring.
Iran announced its first cases of COVID-19 on Feb 19. — NNN-XINHUA
