61 days have passed since the “official” announcement of the first COVID-19 deaths and cases in Iran (considering Feb 19 local time). The country is still struggling to contain it even though it was the second hot zone of the virus due to incompetency, mismanagement and corruption in the government. While the president and his administration continue claiming everything is “under control” and the country is reopened, the Ministry of Health announced 1,343 new cases and 87 deaths in the past 24 hours. That’s a jump in deaths from yesterday and a consistent growth factor above 1.
Total: 82,211
Dead: 5,118
Healed: 57,023
Critical: 3,456
Admitted: 20,070
Tests: 341,662
Iran International Death Toll: 9,117 (Last updated April 13)
However, if you compare the numbers of “healed”, “admitted” and “tests” in the past few days, it’ll become obvious how the officials are making up stats to keep the “death rate” at or around 9 and in the past 3 days, around 8. All to reassure people that they know what they’re doing and keep comparing themselves with EU and US! But what they don’t tell people is how in EU and US the governments have been helping their citizens financially, giving out free masks/gloves,… the fact that Coronavirus has been in Iran for more than 2 months now, and ….
Today’s contradiction trophy goes to Vice President in Science and Technology Affairs, Sorena Sattari. He claimed, “We are ready to export test kits, ventilators and other medical equipment. Some companies have the necessary permission to do so.” Just two days ago, another official had said, “we are still relying on importing test kits.” On the other hand, Javad Zarif, Foreign Minister of Islamic Republic, responds to President Trump about sending ventilators to Iran, by saying: “Iran will have the capacity to export ventilators in a few months.” All while, the deputy health minister and head of the FDA says: “We are importing PPE and other equipment to help some industries in need of protection.”
Negative reactions to IRGC’s “virus detector” are overwhelming and nonstop! A prominent physist and former official at Ministry of Science, calls it a fraud. IRNA, the government’s news agency, named its “inventor” as Kambiz Golshani. There’s not a single scientific paper published by this person domestically or internationally. He’s also been named as the inventor of a “mine detector” as recently as three years ago. Social media were the more creative ones and made various jokes about it and the IRGC “scientists”. Iran’s Physics Association called it fiction and impossible. IRGC keeps its silence and has not issued any statement or anything! As we already said, it was probably another way of stealing some more money!
While yesterday, officials were celebrating the flattening of the curve, today a jump in deaths may have interrupted their joy! Many experts, including Ministry of Health’s officials have warned Rouhani that premature reopening of the country could have a catastrophic result, but he chose economy over health! Now that Subways are as busy as ever and “smart social distancing” is impossible, everybody should be prepared for another disaster.