Deputy head of the Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, Mohammad Hassan Fallah, said on Friday that it has been certified that the ‘Razi Cov-Pars’ is a safe and harmless vaccine.
The safety of the homegrown recombinant protein vaccine, administered via injection or inhalation, has been confirmed in the first and second phases of the clinical trials, he added.
Fallah noted that the third phase of human trials will begin in July or August.
Cov-Pars is the second major Iranian vaccine against COVID-19 that is based on recombinant protein and can be injected or inhaled.
Iran’s first coronavirus vaccine COVIran Barekat, named after the pharmaceutical group that developed it, has already gone into three stages of clinical trials, the last of which involved 20,000 people in the cities of Tehran, Bushehr, Shiraz, Karaj, Mashhad and Isfahan.
Iran has already granted emergency use authorization to Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, Covaxin made by India’s Bharat Biotech, Oxford/AstraZeneca developed by Russia’s R-Pharm Group, and the AstraZeneca-SKBio made in South Korea.