A new color is introduced to the map of Iran and COVID-19 vaccine chaos continues! National Task Force held its weekly meeting presided over by the President of Islamic Republic. Rouhani claimed people should rest assured they won’t be tested on for any foreign vaccine and a vaccine will be provided from a “reliable source.” “There have been vaccines offered to us in order to be tested on our people but our Ministry of Health didn’t accept those offers.” On the other hand, Cuba announced signing an agreement with Islamic Republic to do third phase of its vaccine’s human trial in Iran, on Iranians! This was previously confirmed by FDA Spokesman.
After yesterday’s Khamenei speech and banning US and UK vaccines for Iranians, Islamic Republic propaganda network has started spreading lies about complications of Pfizer and Astrazeneca coronavirus vaccines!
In the meantime, “blue” was used besides “red”, “orange” and “yellow” for the first time by Ministry of Health Spokesperson. Sima Sadat Lari presented her daily manipulated and undercounted data. According to her, 82 have died of COVID-19 in Iran in the past 24 hours while 5,924 tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Number of red counties increased to 7, expanding to Golestan (3) from Mazandaran (4). 30 counties are considered “orange”, 219 “yellow” and 192 “blue.”
A member of Scientific Subcommittee of National Task Force explained “blue” is given to cities with “low danger” which is a level safer than “yellow.” Dr. Mardani said this addition is to warn people that there’s still some danger and health protocols must still be followed. In the past 11 months, there has been no scientific explanation for the colors. According to Dr. Zali, 4 admissions per 100,000 is considered “yellow” and if it reaches 6 it would be “orange.”
While officials have designated Tehran as “yellow,” restrictions are relaxed even more than before and despite worrisome situation regarding the new UK fast-spreading variant. More businesses are open and traveling to other cities is easier! Islamic Republic officials are very happy with the situation, thousands are infected daily and close to a hundred are dead, based on very low number of daily tests! According to official statistics, 54,000 tests are performed daily and only 9.8% of population have been tested after 11 months of COVID-19 epidemic in Iran.
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) and graphs depict the coronavirus waves in the past 327 days, showing warning signs for the next wave in February.
R0: 4.24
Total: 1,280,438 (+5,924)
Dead: 56,100 (+82)
Recovered: 1,067,466
Critical: 4,686 (-43)
Admitted: 156,872 (-2,970)
Tests: 8,099,191 (9.8% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Fatemeh Aali
