Jahanpur, the usual actor in the daily show of Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Health, announced 2,274 new confirmed cases and 136 deaths in the past 24 hours. Contrary to the President speech yesterday, he said, “The situation in Tehran is extremely dangerous. The virus doesn’t follow our holidays that after the New Year Holidays everybody is back on the streets.” He added, “We’re going to have another peak in the next 7-10 days the way things are handled.”
Total: 60,500
Dead: 3,739
Healed: 24,236
Critical: 4,083
While the “official” numbers are decreasing according to the regime’s plan, Iran International reports 8,099 deaths so far. That’s a jump of 1,506 during weekend. Tehran is at the top with 1,134 casualties. Khorasan Razavi, Isfahan, Mazandaran, Gilan and East Azarbaijan are in dire situations. But still the president insists on everything going back to normal in the rest of the country by Saturday April 11, and April 18 in Tehran.
Graphs could be found here.
Yesterday, Jahanpur held a later than usual press conference and called Chinese statistics a “bitter joke” that fooled everybody to believe COVID-19 had a mortality rate like flu. It caused a backlash from China, specifically the Chinese Ambassador to Tehran. Foreign Ministry Spokesman came to clean after Jahanpur and the Ambassador responded.
Today, most of the press conference was wasted on clarifying his position that it was not political but purely scientific. He said, “We thank China for their help as much as we despise US for their sanctions.”
After WEEKS of waiting, and just after the regime found out their ruse can’t fool US administration to approve their $5billion IMF loan, Khamenei “authorized” the government to use 1 billion Euro from the Sovereignty Wealth Fund to use for combating COVID-19 outbreak in the country saving people. After thousands have died because they had to go to work, didn’t have the money to survive.
While all this is happening, people are dying of the virus and/or poverty, the government rather impose fright:
Just like said before, regime is reporting the numbers even lower than usual so people go back to work, blame the next peak on people and this circle goes on for a while until there is a treatment or vaccine for the disease, and in the meantime, they don’t care if more Iranians are dead. Just like Jahanpur said, “We need to buy some time.” All this shows is that the regime is on the verge of collapse and doesn’t have any plan to contain the virus and cannot afford to close the country.
The show must go on! This video is from April 1, where Basiji forces celebrate defeating Coronavirus.