Iraqi Kurdistan denies smuggling Pfizer vaccine to Iran… What’s the story?

The Ministry of Health of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq denied yesterday information circulated on social media about the “smuggling” of the Pfizer vaccine from the region to Iran.

She stated in a press release : “A video showing a box of Pfizer vaccine being smuggled into a country was circulated on social media yesterday,” Russia Today reported.

She added : “The video is published under the BBC’s logo and is attributed to us using a fake stamp, which is a composite, and has nothing to do with Kurdistan.”

“A team of advisors from our ministry started preliminary investigations in coordination with the federal Ministry of Health and a representative of the Pfizer company, and the video turned out to be unfounded,” she said.

The Ministry of Health in the Kurdish Region of Iraq said it would continue to investigate and follow up to find the source of the chaos, and would inform the public of the latest developments and subsequent findings, according to the statement.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic about a year ago until Tuesday, the number of COVID-19 cases in the Kurdistan region has totalled more than 141 thousand cases, including about 3896 deaths.

Since the spread of the mutated strain of coronavirus earlier this year, health centers in the Kurdish region have recorded daily infection rates of more than 1000 cases on more than one occasion, according to al-Ain.