Tasnim � Iranian Health Minister Saeed Namaki announced the creation of a special national committee charged with overseeing the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.

In a decree on Thursday, the Iranian minister tapped Dr Mohammad Mahdi Gooya, the head of the Health Ministry's Communicable Diseases Center, to lead the panel, which will be tasked with cooperating with all Iranian scientific centers and knowledge-based firms to facilitate the creation of a vaccine for the viral infection.

He also assigned Dr Alireza Biglari, the director of the Pasteur Institute of Iran, Seyed Mahmoud Masiha Hashemi, Assistant Professor at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Dr Seyed Alireza Hosseini, an associate professor of exercise physiology, and Dr Ehsan Shamsi Gooshki, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Medical Ethics Department, Faculty Member, as member of the committee.

On August 12, Namaki said a number of vaccines for the novel coronavirus being developed inside the country had successfully passed the human tests and were ready for clinical trial.

Recently, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called on the Health Ministry to make all the arrangements necessary for the purchase of vaccines so far developed by other countries against the novel coronavirus.

The number of people infected with COVID-19 in Iran has surpassed 380,746 and the death toll has exceeded 21,900.