Just like in the past few days, as it’s visible in the graphs, the numbers made up by officials show another decrease. Ministry of Health Spokesman, Kianoush Jahanpur, announced 2,715 new confirmed cases and 134 deaths since yesterday. He mentioned more than 69 million Iranians participated in the online self-screening website. The website which has been hacked and the information of people have been auctioned for 10 bitcoin (about $60,000) on the darknet. The information included: Name, date of birth and National ID numbers of more than 69 million.
However, the Civil Registration Organization announced they have blocked Ministry of Health access to their services until the security bug is rectified. On the other hand, Jahanpur, brushed it off and said, “This will be investigated and the results will be announced later by the IT security department. This happens to every big project and this was no exception.” Another disaster in Islamic Republic which is being downplayed!
Total: 53,183
Dead: 3,294
Healed: 17,935
Critical: 4,035
While the number of critical patients is climbing, and the growth factor for deaths and infected is constantly above 1 (showing exponential growth), the officials keep saying the situation is under control and are celebrating their “great” achievement!
Iran International, a London based resourceful credible Persian news agency, reports 37% increase in the number of infected in the past 24 hours. Deaths reported a jump of 576 (updated to reflect the correct number from the source) within the last 2 days. This is catastrophic.
While they have stopped providing numbers for each province on March 22, they started announcing the number of critical patients a few days later. It seems like eventually, the critical cases will be added to the deaths to make up for the deficit they have created over weeks of lying and cover up.
The government have announced extension of the holidays until April 8, and have said starting April 9, eventually everything will go back to normal if everybody follows “social distancing” instructions. This decision may change by then. However, since Iran’s economy in its worst shape possible, the government and people have no choice but go back to normal days or risk losing everything. That’s why as a backup plan for the predictable catastrophe, the IRIB has already started blaming people for a possible “return” of COVID-19 wave. But, this video shows how people are following self-quarantine instructions without it being a strict law or any force behind them. This is a bazaar in Tehran, capital city with more than 15million residents. 100% of stores are closed and not a single person on the streets.
While the President had said, “we don’t have any problem” in terms of ventilators and controlling the disease, the Ministry of Health Spokesman has reiterated the same point, Acting Director of Iran’s Red Cross admitted the immediate shortage of 1000 and long term need to 2000 ventilators across the country! Another shocking revelation by Karim Hemmati was the fact that Red Cross hadn’t had a director in the first days of the outbreak. He said, “When our agency didn’t have a director, the crisis wasn’t serious.”!!!! He also said, “we received the order to help in the crisis on March 17”. It’s worth mentioning, the outbreak was officially announced on Feb 20!
Photo: AFP