The chairman of the healthcare committee at the Islamic Republic’s parliament, MP Hosseinali Shahriari said 800,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines will arrive in Iran from South Korea soon.

Shahriari told the state-owned Fars News that South Korea was previously supposed to deliver more than 16 million doses to Iran, and the credit for the purchase had been provided, but so far, they have not delivered anything yet.

Shahriari did not elaborate on the source of the credit for the purchase of the vaccines from South Korea. But it could be related to Iran’s frozen funds in that country which has caused some tensions between Tehran and Seoul in recent months. After South Korea froze Iran’s funds in its banks because of US sanctions, Iran seized a South Korean tanker in the Persian Gulf in January, claiming environmental reasons. Although the Islamic Republic officials initially denied any connection between the two cases, later on, some officials admitted that the cases are in fact related.

There were unconfirmed reports recently that the US has allowed South Korea to release a portion of Iran’s frozen funds.

According to MP Shahriari and the Minister of Health Saeed Namaki, so far 500 thousand doses of vaccine have been imported from Russia, 250 thousand doses from China, and 125 thousand doses from India. This means that out of approximately 85 million Iranians in the country, only 875 thousand have been vaccinated.

Despite President Hassan Rouhani’s recent claims about the Islamic Republic’s great record in fighting the pandemic and Iran’s economy being less impacted by the pandemic than even that of Germany, the head of Iran’s Central Bank recently admitted that Iran’s economy was one of the most impacted by the pandemic. Medical experts and health officials in Iran also question the government’s claims about the success of the fight against Covid -19, while the fourth wave of the pandemic is hitting Iran hard, with new strains of the virus spreading fast in many regions.

According to the Ministry of Health, the COVID-19 daily death toll has once again increased, reaching three-digit figures since last weekend. Based on official reports, this brings the total death toll of coronavirus in Iran to 63, 332 cases.

The ministry also reported 13,890 new confirmed cases of coronavirus on Monday. There are currently 4,095 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units across the country, with 88 cities and counties in the coronavirus red zone and 139 in the orange zone.