Iran announces a slight improvement in its coronavirus numbers

There are signs of a slight easing in the coronavirus situation in Iran, according to an announcement made by the country's Health Ministry on Saturday.
Although the number of cases is still relatively high due to the Delta variant of the coronavirus, they represent a significant improvement on the situation over the last four weeks, the ministry said.
The number of daily Covid-19-related deaths in Iran dropped from over 700 to around 350 and new infections have gone from over 50,000 daily cases to under 13,000. Iran has recorded a total of 116,000 deaths and almost 5.5 million infections since the beginning of the pandemic. Health experts ascribed the sudden turnaround to the arrival of more vaccine doses in the country, as well as to the completion of domestically-produced vaccines in the last four weeks.
The vaccination programme, which had been lagging until this week, has been massively expanded with various locations, including public parks and even military installations, being used as vaccine centres.
According to the Health Ministry, more than a third of the population has now received at least one vaccine dose, while some 16 per cent of Iranians are now fully vaccinated.