Iran has been battered by COVID-19, the country, which has a population of 80 million was one of the first countries in the world to be hit by the initial wave of the pandemic, and in recent months has been swept up in a new wave of Delta variant infections.As of September, over 100,000 have died.Despite the ravages of the virus, Iran’s vaccination program has remained sluggish. It is limited only to the elderly and requires a cumbersome registration process — for those willing to make the journey, Armenia has become a welcome salvation.Meanwhile, for Armenia, the stream of Iranians flooding across has been a welcome influx of tourist dollars. While universal vaccination went smoothly for the first several months, with vaccines being given on a first-come-first-serve basis, by July that process degenerated into chaos.By July, hours and sometimes days’ long queues formed at the Armenia-Iran border, while prospective vaccine recipients would effectively camp out at vaccination stations in the hope that they could get one before the day’s supply ran out. On July 15, in order to deal with the new influx of vaccine recipients, Armenian authorities brought in a new process. Instead of first-come-first-serve, anyone receiving a vaccine now had to register online.Those who were not citizens or residents of Armenia also had to prove that they had been in the country for at least 10 days before they could receive the vaccine. Check out the full report on OC Media.
https://oc-media.org/features/vaccine-tourism-continues-to-boom-in-armenia/
