The file photo shows a healthcare worker preparing to give an injection of the COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Tehran, Iran.

Iran’s Health Ministry says the COVID-19 has claimed 19 lives over the past day, the lowest daily toll in almost two years.

The ministry on Friday reported 1,178 new COVID-19 cases, taking the country’s total infections to 6,204,224. It noted that 131,821 people have so far lost their lives since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic some 22 months ago.

According to the report, a total of 6,048,957 people have recovered or been discharged from hospital across the country, while 2,060 remained in intensive care units (ICU).

Coronavirus figures have been declining in Iran thanks to the government’s mass vaccination campaign. So far, 60,032,419 people have received the first dose of the COVID vaccine, 52,444,380 have received the second dosage and 9,505,625 have gotten the booster shots. The total number of vaccines injected in the country reached 121,982,424 doses.

So far, 42,661,668 diagnosis tests have been conducted across Iran.

According to the latest figures, no case of death due to COVID-19 was recorded in 22 Iranian provinces over the past 24 hours, while only one case of death was reported in 4 provinces.

Dean of Kashan University of Medical Sciences (KAUMS) Alireza Moraveji said on Tuesday that Iranian researchers have developed a first home-grown test kit for detecting the Omicron variant of coronavirus.

He added that the new test kit is able to identify various variants of coronavirus including the newly-detected Omicron.