COVID-19 daily death toll broke its record again, only after 2 days. Sima Sadat Lari, Ministry of Health Spokesperson, announced 2,079 new cases and 221 deaths in the past 24 hours! She continued by naming the same provinces who were “red” and “alarming” yesterday. However, she didn’t stop there! She continued, “The virus is spreading faster than before across the world.” While that’s true, she should have mentioned 143 days have passed since the “official” announcement of the epidemic in Iran, more than any other country in the world, except China. She might have forgotten that Islamic Republic has done NOTHING to stop the spread of the virus and only has made it worse with officials’ wrong and theocratic decisions! They either hid the crisis for WEEKS or prematurely lifted the restrictions. No quarantine, no real lockdown beyond the usual annual Persian New Year holidays,…The list goes on and on! It is obvious there is no plan whatsoever to control the spread of the virus, for Islamic Republic, the plan is: whatever happens, happens!
Tehran, the most populous, capital and biggest city of Iran is facing the crisis worse than the first wave of the pandemic in Feb-March. All hospitals are ordered to accept patients even though not all of them have the equipment to treat COVID-19 patients. Even then, most of them are at full capacity. On the other hand, head of Tehran’s Corona Combating Committee, Dr Ali Zali, said, “Unfortunately, we’re not mentioned as “red” officially, so we don’t have certain authorities to impose restrictions.” He continued the officials should give the committee in Tehran more authority to make the right decisions! He said in Tehran, only some very high risk centers or Friday Prayer are banned, but at this time, that’s not enough. In his last night’s interview on TV, he said, “This is not a joke. We’re at war. If it was up to us, we would lock down Tehran for a week.”
Northern provinces, Golestan and Mazandaran, have joined the list of critical zones. Friday Prayers who were held in “yellow” zones till last week, is now banned in Golestan altogether. Khamenei and religious leaders who were insisting on having “rituals” resumed as soon as possible, despite all the warnings from experts, are now blaming people for the unleashed virus! Mazandaran officials warn residents about the rise in cases and admissions, again threatening to reimpose restrictions! Why would they keep threatening instead of acting is the question to ask!
In the meantime, Dr. Pezeshkian, a member of Islamic Republic’s Parliamentary Health Commission reiterated his earlier suggestion and said, “We should have quarantined the epicenters when it all first started! Even now, it’s best if we all get together and close the country for a month! That’s when we can defeat the coronavirus. Otherwise, we would be dealing with multiple peaks at different times which would paralyze our economy even worse.”
Despite all this, record high cases and deaths, Rouhani, the “President of Islamic Republic” who is supposed to protect the lives of Iranians, praises his administration’s actions so far, blames people on the new wave of the pandemic and insists “Laylatul Qadr” gatherings in May were handled very well and the security committee of the National Task Force should prepare plans and directives on how to hold gatherings to “mourn Imam Hossein” in August. That’s more important than having plans for exhausted healthcare staff and hospital resources! All provinces have shortage of nurses and other healthcare staff. Masks are also scarce again and their prices have soared through the roof. Test kits are hard to be found when the authorities kept insisting the increase in cases was mostly due to “active case finding”! Remember when Islamic Republic was one of the biggest “exporters of masks, ventilators and other health equipment” in the region?!
Iran Medical University deputy head announces successful completion of their first phase of coronavirus vaccine. But he didn’t give any definite timing for the next phases. That reminded us of one of a kind, “Mostaan 101“, the magnetic coronavirus detection device invented by IRGC on April 15. We’re still waiting for their press conference to answer some questions! IRGC Commander-in-Chief had another speech about coronavirus today, “We’ll do our best to control and manage the consequences of COVID-19 crisis.” Another signal to take a bigger chunk of the budget to do nothing?!
Interestingly, in contrast to the rest of the world, the death rate is increasing in Iran and despite most hospitals across the country at full capacity, the number of cases show a sharp decline from yesterday! Critical patients keep increasing, Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) and graphs depict the most accurate picture at this time, despite being based on highly suspicious and undercounted data from Ministry of Health. These may be numbers to us, but each one of them, is a human being, somebody’s loved one!
R0: 1.30
Total: 250,458 (+2,079)
Dead: 12,305 (+221)
Healed: 212,176
Critical: 3,324 (+15)
Admitted: 25,977 (-855)
Tests: 1,897,803 (Number of labs wasn’t mentioned in today’s news. Officials may have finally figured out there are discrepancies when they lie.)
