Amid covid surge, Iran cut corners to approve yet-unproven vaccine

The government ignored a top health official’s warning against greenlighting a lucrative vaccine developed by a firm close to Ayatollah Khamenei

Amid covid surge, Iran cut corners to approve yet-unproven vaccine

Washington post Aug 21,2022

By : Yeganeh Torbati

As Iranian regulators considered endorsing a locally developed coronavirus vaccine a year ago, a top health official issued a stern warning, saying the test results were insufficient and the vaccine’s approval could undermine efforts to contain the country’s raging epidemic.

Deputy Health Minister Farid Najafi wrote to his boss that allowing use of the vaccine by the general public before it met scientific standards “is a serious and historic decision that will determine the future of public confidence in the health system.”

But the vaccine had influential backers. It was the highly touted project of a company called Barkat, part of a sprawling corporate empire close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Less than a week later, Health Minister Saeed Namaki announced that the vaccine had received emergency approval. At the time, Barkat had not even begun its Phase 3 clinical trial, meant to confirm the vaccine’s effectiveness and identify possible side effects, Iranian researchers later reported in a medical journal. That trial started two days later, the researchers said. The results are still not public.

In approving Barkat’s vaccine, the government demonstrated how a largely unaccountable Iranian state often pursues policies that benefit those connected to the regime, speciously identifying the Iranian elite’s interests with those of the public. But rarely had the stakes been higher. At the time, Iran was suffering the Middle East’s worst coronavirus outbreak and was on the brink of its deadliest wave yet.

Government officials cut corners to expedite a yet-unproven vaccine that would be highly profitable for Khamenei’s favored conglomerate, financial documents show, even as the supreme leader barred the import of some Western-made vaccines, and as imports of other vaccines encountered delays. Yet another vaccine being partly developed in Iran had also been moving toward regulatory approval, but the Barkat vaccine leapfrogged to the front of the line, according to government and company documents.

Over the following year, Barkat would fall short in delivering the millions of vaccine doses it had promised. Though a top executive had told Khamenei in a letter that more than 50 million doses would be available by last September, only half that amount had been produced by early this year, according to a company disclosure. While there is no evidence that the Barkat vaccine was harmful, its impact on the pandemic has been minimal. Most Iranians who have been vaccinated ultimately received Chinese vaccines.