Iran Press/ Iran News: Pasture Institute is one of the oldest vaccine production in the country and the Middle East.
Head of Iran's Pasture Institute, Alireza Biglari, said on Saturday: "The tools that we dreamed of having since the disease outbreak, now exist and we are forerunner of diagnosis, due to our relying on indigenous knowledge and young scientists."
Alireza Bigleri made the remarks while describing the status quo of the COVID pandemic in Iran at a press conference held on Saturday, February 19.
Biglari said: "The opportunity that is under threat may not exist in normal days; we had a lot of challenges at the beginning of the pandemic in Iran, but the country's strategy was to make the best use of the available tests, so we often provided the available test capacity to hospitals with the patients entering hospitals with respiratory symptoms on priority."
He highlighted that before detecting the first cases in the country, diagnostic procedures were set up in Iran, and three laboratories were able to diagnose the cases.
The health official further said: "In the early days of the pandemic, when the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that we use three genes to check for disease, we used one gene because we believed it was enough to identify and diagnose the disease. Iran endorsed this strategy for diagnosing the disease with a single gene and recommended it to other countries."
He stressed that coronavirus diagnosis is now performed in 500 laboratories across the country while having the national laboratory network was a dream.
The Iranian health official promised good news for the next week.
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Iran's Pasture Institute; leading vaccine producer in region
