By Syed Zafar Mehdi
TEHRAN, Iran (AA) – Iran’s Health Ministry reported zero deaths from COVID19 on Thursday, more than two years after the pandemic first broke out in the country.
According to the ministry's daily bulletin, 175 fresh cases were reported on Thursday, taking the overall caseload to 7,232,443.
The total number of fatalities from the novel coronavirus in Iran stood at 141,318.
As per the ministry's color map, no city is currently marked in the "red" category (high risk) or "orange" category (moderate risk).
In a message posted on Twitter, Health Minister Bahram Einollahi said zero COVID-19 deaths in the country had come "after two years and 100 days."
Congratulating the country's leadership and people and paying tribute to frontline health workers who died of the virus, the minister said adherence to health protocols must continue until the virus is fully eliminated.
The first two deaths from the cataclysmic virus were reported in the region's worst-hit country on February 19, 2020.
The duo belonged to central Qom city, which was the first virus epicenter in Iran, before it spread to other cities, including Tehran.
Over the past 27 months, the sanctions-battered country grappled with six devastating waves of the pandemic, fueled by highly-transmissible variants of the coronavirus such as delta and omicron.
The slow pace of vaccination only compounded the misery of people, which authorities mainly attributed to difficulties in importing vaccines due to sanctions.
The vaccine rollout intensified after the government of Ebrahim Raisi took over last year, and the indigenously-produced vaccines also became ready for use.
So far, 52.2 million have been administered one shot of the vaccine, 57.8 million have got two jabs and 27.8 million have got the booster shot as well.
Last week, Einollahi announced plans to export four million doses of domestically manufactured COVID-19 vaccines abroad, with the first destination being Venezuela.