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TEHRAN: Foreign companies will not be able to test COVID-19 vaccines on the Iranian people, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday (January 9), a day after Iran’s Supreme Leader banned imports of vaccines from the United States and Britain.
“The foreign companies wanted to give us vaccines to be tested on the Iranian people. But the Health Ministry prevented it,” Rouhani said in televised remarks, without naming the companies or giving further details.
READ: Iran’s leader bans the importation of COVID-19 vaccines from the US and the UK, and demands an end to sanctions
“Our people will not be a test device for vaccine manufacturing companies,” he added. “We will buy safe foreign vaccines.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s highest authority, said on Friday that the United States and Britain were “unreliable” and possibly seeking to spread the infection to other countries.
Iran could obtain vaccines from other reliable places, he added, without giving details. China and Russia are allies of Iran, the Middle Eastern country most affected by the coronavirus.
Khamenei repeated the accusations in a tweet that was removed by Twitter along with a message saying it violated the platform’s rules against disinformation.
Iran launched human trials of its first national COVID-19 candidate vaccine late last month, saying it could help the country defeat the pandemic despite US sanctions affecting its ability to import vaccines.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have been on the rise since 2018, when President Donald Trump abandoned a 2015 nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions.
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