The mutated coronavirus is making rounds across Iran provinces while Islamic Republic officials refuse to quarantine Khuzestan as the epicenter of the new UK variant. Khuzestan officials have asked National Task Force to permit 2-week lockdown of the province but haven’t heard back from Tehran! Local officials don’t have enough authority to make big decisions due to “security” concerns. Ahvaz Governor decided to cut off the power to downtown and big market in the city on 6:45PM to force closures. The Governor reported all city’s hospitals at full capacity with increasing number of deaths.
Khuzestan Governor called the situation dreadful and warned if this path continues and people don’t follow protocols, “we will have a death epidemic soon.” Head of Ahvaz Medical University said the prevalent variant of coronavirus in Khuzestan is the UK one. Abolnejadian reported the two children who died two day ago, were infected with the UK variant. The 9-year-old girl was first suspected of bacterial meningitis and encephalitis, was transferred to children hospital. Doctors at Abuzar Children Hospital suspected of COVID-19 and after CT Scan found out both lungs were involved. The girl passed away 2 hours after arriving at the hospital! He added this variant is deadlier and must be contained as soon as possible.
Abolnejadian continued the origin of the variant was from Netherlands who a Khuzestan resident brought it in, and some were infected in Iraq. He confirmed the borders with Iraq are closed for now until every person entering Iran can be tested. Head of Khuzestan Corona Combating Committee said unfortunately some people were selling negative test results on the other side of borders, forcing us to close borders.
Ilam closed its border with Khuzestan and Kermanshah reported the possibility of UK variant in the province is high. Hormozgan confirmed 2 new cases of the fast-spreading version of the virus.
In the meantime, Chairman of Iran Medical Council criticized being behind in immunization with vaccines and the low number of people vaccinated so far, he tweeted, “only 20,000 of 80,000,000 population of Iran have been vaccinated so far!” Officials have promised 1,300,000 will be vaccinated by March 21, using Sputnik V, Sinopharm and South Korean AstraZeneca! However, the Chinese Sinopharm and AstraZeneca haven’t arrived in the country yet. COVIran Barekat officials keep claiming bold statements. Today, the head of vaccination production at “Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order” said preliminary agreement has been signed with 3 countries and 2 other countries are waiting!
Sima Sadat Lari announced her daily undercounted data. According to her manipulated figures, 74 died of COVID-19 in Iran in the past 24 hours while 7,931 tested positive for the novel coronavirus. For the first time in 12 months, daily PCR tests surpassed 57,000, far away from the 100,000 promised. The Ministry of Health Spokesperson confirmed the uptrend in cases and deaths. Active cases keep rising, forming the next peak, as seen on graphs. Critical cases rose for the second day in a row.
R0: 4.18
Total: 1,574,012 (+7,931)
Dead: 59,483 (+74)
Recovered: 1,344,791
Critical: 3,689 (+12)
Admitted: 169,738 (+943)
Tests: 10,444,695 (12.5% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Mohammad Mehdi Ameli
