Kianoush Jahanpur, Ministry of Health Spokesman, announced a predictable 2,560 new confirmed cases and 158 deaths since yesterday afternoon. Another increase in critical cases brought the total ICU critical patients to 4,103. There was no mention of the “self-screening” online platform, salamt.gov.ir. As reported yesterday, the service was scrambled because of the hacking incident. At the video press conference, in response to a question about when the virus would be under control and how the overall situation is, he said, “We are in an overall decline but 5 provinces are in red situation: East Azerbaijan, Isfahan, Khorasan Razavi, Mazandaran and Fars.” He continued, “We need to buy time and don’t think this is something going away. We have to adapt to live with this virus until a vaccine or drug is discovered for it. If we don’t continue the social distancing protocols, this would get worse by day.” Another example of direct contradiction to the President who said “we’ve passed the peak”, “the country should go back to normal gradually from April 8”,…and how the right hand doesn’t know what the left does or says.
Total: 55,743
Dead: 3,452
Healed: 19,736
Critical: 4,103
Numbers don’t lie and according to the graphs, all the claims that “we’re managing it well,…” are farce. They can’t hold to their statements for ONE single day.
While Jahanpur claimed there are empty beds in Tehran’s hospitals and referrals have decreased, Deputy Health Minister, Iraj Harirchi, attended another video press conference saying, “Tehran’s situation is very worrisome and should be taken seriously.” As reported earlier, they’ve already began to blame people for spreading the virus because they can’t stay home. Well, first of all that’s a lie, as shown in a video yesterday. Secondly, people don’t have any savings and can’t not go to work. They will starve to death since the economy of a corrupted regime has brought the country to the verge of collapse.
On the other hand, 16 parliament representatives have signed a bill to be sent to the floor on Tuesday, in order to close the country for 1 month. In this bill, they’ve asked for the government to include an economic stimulus package. Postponing paying the bills, paying all government employees, paying hazard pay to healthcare workers,… They have introduced the source of the money as well. They claim the government can do all these if they stop selling subsidized gas, spending the full amount of the $5billion IMF loan (regime applied for it weeks ago), and $1billion from national strategic vault only if the Supreme Leader allows it!!
The government is supposed to decide about extension of the shut down after April 8. All experts, including the Ministry of Health officials, are asking for the extension but the President is worried about the economic implications. The Supreme Leader has the authority over the National Strategic Vault with billions of dollars but hasn’t agreed for the money to be used to combat COVID-19 in the country.
Mahmoud Sadeghi, one of the representatives who tested positive and recovered, admitted the first cases were known to the officials and they knew all the warnings since early January, but opposed to do anything about it and didn’t announce the outbreak until Feb 20, when it was too late.
Khaemeni’s representative in Pardisan repeated the Supreme Leader’s nonsense rhetoric that COVID-19 could be caused by goblins and jinns.
This is just a feckless mess throughout the whole system. From the top, a “commander-in-chief” not allowing people’s money used for their own welfare to the mismanagement of the government supervised by a legislative branch closed for more than 40 days. It’s becoming harder and harder to keep track of all the lies and contradictory statements.