Abbas Shiravjen said the decision was made due to the current surge in Covid infections and the increase in the number of red and orange cities.
The Iranian health ministry said on Friday four cities are back in the “red” or “high risk” state on the country’s color-coded Covid-19 tracking map. 14 cities were also classified as “orange,” where there is a “moderately elevated” risk of infection with the respiratory disease.
Shiravjen also said most Iranians got their second shot of the jab a long time ago and they now need to receive their boosters and take this issue seriously.
Shiravjen noted that the Iranian health ministry must increase the number of vaccination centers for this purpose.
Meanwhile, the health ministry figures on Saturday showed two people had died of the Coronavirus in the past 24 hours in Iran. The number of new infections was 894 including 160 hospitalizations.
The number fatalities and daily caseload on Friday was 7 and 2013 respectively.
There are over 27 million triple-vaxxed people in Iran. The figure has increased very slowly in recent months, showing that Iranians are unwilling to get their booster shots.
This is while authorities have recently declared that people must take their fourth shot of the Covid vaccine.
The Coronavirus has so far killed 141,429 people in Iran.
Over 150 million shots of vaccine have been injected since Iran rolled out its nationwide inoculation process some two years ago.
