A group of Iranian citizens are calling on their government to purchase doses of the available coronavirus vaccines in a campaign that launched alongside the Iranian festival Yalda Night, Al-Monitor reports.
Typically, on Yalda Night, families with gather together to read poetry on the night of the Winter Solstice, in a tradition that has lasted for hundreds of years.
This year, due to the coronavirus, families are unable to get together, leading many in Iran, where almost 55,000 have died from the coronavirus, to take this time to express their frustration with their government’s response to the pandemic, including its apparent reluctance to purchase coronavirus vaccines despite other neighboring countries in the Middle East doing so.
On December 20, the day before Yalda 2020, a social media campaign began calling on the Iranian government to “just import the vaccine.”
The top trending Persian hashtag, as of Monday morning, translates to “buy the vaccine,” according to Al-Monitor. Other posts call on the government to purchase vaccines “for the elderly who face imminent death,” “for the sake of the fatigued medical staff,” and “for the schoolchildren who are grappling with depression.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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