Khamenei Urges Iranians To Receive Covid Booster Shot

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has received his booster shot and urged people to do the same as the omicron variant of Covid-19 has gripped the country.

During a meeting with air force commanders on Tuesday, Khamenei said that he believes in and acts upon the recommendations of doctors and received his third dose of the vaccine a few months ago.

According to Alireza Marandi, Khamenei's personal physician, the supreme leader received the Iranian-manufactured Covid-19 vaccine called Cov-Iran Barakat, but some say political leaders have been inoculated by the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Khamenei had banned the purchase of US and British-made vaccines in January 2021, saying that "Importing vaccines made in the US or the UK is prohibited. They are completely untrustworthy. It is not unlikely that they would want to contaminate other nations… French vaccines are not trustworthy either”.

The number of daily Covid deaths is now over a hundred while daily cases are reported to be about 40,000.

Health authorities, who have said the country is in its sixth wave of the pandemic, warn the figures are expected to increase exponentially during the next two months, stressing that the new variant is also very difficult to detect.

Despite the highly contagious Covid-19 Omicron variant spreading fast across Iran, President Ebrahim Raisi has rejected proposals for a nationwide shutdown.