Delta variant of the novel coronavirus is gaining more momentum by the day, and Islamic Republic officials continue refusing to provide specific details about the strain(s), they have been hiding the true numbers and information about the epidemic since the beginning. Today, Ministry of Health issued the list of “high risk” areas and added 30 more cities, bringing the total number of “red” counties to 92! The new list include the city of Tehran, and some other capital cities in 20 of 31 provinces.
Hormozgan, Kerman and Sistan-Baluchestan situation is “beyond critical” and hospitals are filled with COVID-19 patients. Officials warn of humanitarian catastrophe. Shortage of healthcare staff is adding to their problems and late or no implementation of proper restrictions just keeps the vicious cycle going. Kohgiloyeh-Boyerahmad reports “more than 35%” positivity rate among a city’s residents. And Gilan, in the north of the country, recorded increasing number of outpatients.
While Sistan-Baluchestan, Hormozgan, Kerman, Yazd and Bushehr have all sounded the alarm about the fifth wave of COVID-19 in Iran dominated by Delta (Indian) variant, the officials have just announced travel ban from 12 countries, which does not include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey or Iraq which have surge of cases with Delta and shared borders with Iran! The list, however, include: Botswana, Brazil, Swaziland, India, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, South Africa, Uruguay, Zambia, Zimbabwe. Travelers from 24 other countries, again excluding the neighbors, must show negative PCR test at their arrival and departure.
Vaccination continues slowly with daily administration of doses on a constant decline. According to official data, only 51,520 shots were administered in the past 24 hours. Since February 9, total of 6,201,573 jabs have been used while only 1,754,545 (2.08% of Iran population) are fully vaccinated. In the meantime, despite officials’ promises, no shipment of new vaccines has arrived and COVIran Barekat and PastoCoVac are in a hiatus, even though they have both been “approved” for “emergency use” in Iran. According to Cuban officials, the Soberana 02 (PastoCoVac in Iran) is only 62% effective after 2 of its 3 doses and COVIran Barekat has not finished its supposed third phase of clinical trials and no results have been published as of yet.
Ministry of Health Spokesperson presented her daily manipulated figures, which according to Iran Medical Board officials, are at least 1/3 of the real numbers. Sima Sadat Lari claimed 127 died of COVID-19 in Iran in the past 24 hours and 13,836 tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Without mentioning any info on specific variants, she announced more than 1,560 hospitalizations in the same time frame. As seen on the graphs, daily PCR tests performed are on a constant decline while active and critical cases have begun to rise, another confirmation for the fifth wave.
R0: 2.82
Total: 3,232,696 (+13,836)
Dead: 84,516 (+127)
Recovered: 2,902,140
Critical: 3,196 (+9)
Active Cases: 246,040 (+1,508)
Tests: 23,806,452 (28.3% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
