According to a report from the Statistics and Information Technology Management Center, 2,072 Iranians out of the 2.85 million who had received two doses of COVID-19 vaccine at the time of the study have died, about 700 “breakthrough” deaths for every million people fully vaccinated (counting only those hospitalized at least two weeks after the second dose). By contrast, on July 26 the US Centers for Disease Control reported a breakthrough hospitalization rate of 0.003%—30 per million—and a breakthrough death rate of just 8 per million.
The report suggests that reasons for the high breakthrough fatality rate in Iran include the use of inferior vaccines (all those so far used in Iran have been imported from China and Russia) and failure to observe recommended vaccine administration schedules. To date, including those who received their second doses after the Statistics Center’s study period, fewer than 5 million Iranians—less than 6 percent of the country’s population—have been fully vaccinated.