DUBAI: Iranian state media have published claims that a medicine made in the cash-strapped country for coronavirus patients will be available on the local market in three weeks. The Iranian claims sparked controversy and lots of skepticism on social media.
The Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) on Sunday quoted the country’s Vice President for Science and Technology, Sorena Sattari, as making the claims.
The Jerusalem Post later carried a version of the same story descrbing the alleged breakthrough as “an Iranian-made medicine designed to help combat the novel coronavirus.”
Sattari was quoted as saying Iranian companies at a science park in Iran’s Hamadan province had played a critical role in combatting the pandemic – particularly in fulfilling the country’s medical equipment needs.
There are billions of dollars in funding being offered to laboratories worldwide to find the cure for the coronavirus pandemic.
A simple search of the World Health Organisation’s document entitled “DRAFT landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines,” dated July 24, 2020 makes no mention of any Iranian laboratories - or other - making any headway into finding a medicine that would help, let alone cure the coronavirus.
Iran was slow to react to the initial outbreak and soon became the worst hit country in the Middle East - and remains so even now - it has more than 293,600 infections, and over 15,000 fatalities.
Iran has the eleventh highest number of cases of COVID-19 in the world, according to the website worldometers.info, and ranks the tenth highest for fatalities.
In March Iranian authorities issued an arrest warrant for a cleric, after video footage circulated showing him offering a COVID-19 patient perfume claiming it would cure the man's illness - the patient later died.
And in May Iran, derspite being the Middle East’s worst hit country for the disease, was still accepting pilgrims into the Shia holy city of Qom, while other religious sites around the world were closed, including Makkah's Grand Mosque.
