Sima Sadat Lari announced the daily undercounted and fake data! According to her, 295 COVID-19 patients lost their lives and 10,223 tested positive for coronavirus in Iran in the past 24 hours. She also mentioned 64 red counties, 278 orange and 106 yellow. Testing remains in the same 45,000 a day while critical cases remained the same compared to yesterday!
On the other hand, Saeed Namaki bragged about the “successful” 2-week lockdown plan, saying, there are 34 red cities in the country! He claimed 30% decrease in the number of beds used for COVID-19 patients in the hospitals, but he didn’t mention any details or frame of reference. The Health Minister added, 70-100 thousands of tests are done on a daily basis which will be increased to 120,000! However, according to the Ministry of Health Spokesperson, there have never been more than 45,691 tests in the past 24 hours, which is incidentally the highest number of daily tests!
Namaki went back on his previous claim about COVID-19 vaccine pre-ordered doses and said, “US sanctions have caused problems but with our friends’ helps in Central Bank and Foreign Ministry, the hurdles are being tackled and vaccine will be imported for the vulnerable groups.” Rouhani said he had ordered all ministries and officials involved to help vaccine reach the country.
Fars reports a spike in deaths again. Head of Tehran Corona Combating Committee describes the situation in the capital as “worrisome” and warned about gatherings on “Yalda Night,” Iranians’ tradition on the longest night of the year, on December 20.
After 10 months of COVID-19 crisis in Iran and according to some conservative estimation, 128,030 deaths, Islamic Republic officials want to “track” anybody’s contacts within 14 days prior to their coronavirus positive test! They have called it part of “martyr Soleimani” plan which is another attempt by the regime to attract people to the slain IRGC commander and his cause!
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) and graphs continue to be the best indicators depicting the ongoing crisis since February 2020!
R0: 4.55
Total: 1,072,620 (+10,223)
Dead: 51,212 (+295)
Recovered: 765,639
Critical: 5,779 (-1)
Admitted: 255,769 (-1,487)
Tests: 6,523,469 (7.8% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)