125 more deaths are reported by Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Health Spokesperson, Sima Sadat Lari, from yesterday. She also announced 2,456 new cases making total cases surpass 220,000! She continued her pattern in omitting, adding, changing status of provinces, saying, “Khuzestan, Kermanshah, Kurdistan, Hormozgan, West Azerbaijan and Khorasan Razavi have had the most admissions and cases and are in red status, while East Azerbaijan, Golestan, Bushehr, Lorestan, and Sistan-Baluchestan are in alarming condition.” It looks like she forgets what she’s said the day before or the Islamic Republic officials read the list of critical provinces from our reports here and announce the correct situation the next day, of course with some omissions.
Iraj Harirchi, Deputy Health Minister, held a press conference today, after weeks of no public media encounters by officials. He emphasized on using mask in public by all people. He mentioned a few numbers but didn’t elaborate on how he had reached those, for example, he said, “Each infected person could contaminate up to 406 people.” He also said to encourage everybody to use mask, a campaign has begun on social media with “#من_ماسک_میزنم” hashtag which means: “I wear mask”. He also said, all decisions regarding restrictions, closures, reopening of businesses,… should be taken at the local level as national restrictions wouldn’t respond. He didn’t say why all these measures are implemented so late? After, according to fake and manipulated data by the Ministry, more than 10,000 Iranians have passed away? After 130 days? Why is there still hesitation in reimposing some restrictions in “red” provinces? Waiting for more people to die? In response to mandating wearing mask in public, Harirchi said, “I’m not sure if it is on the agenda for tomorrow’s Task Force meeting, but we ask people to follow the instructions.”
Harirchi repeated himself several times that wearing mask, social distancing for 1m, and wearing eye shields are the only ways to combat this unknown virus. He said, each of these ways reduce the risk of spreading the virus by 85%, 82% and 78%, respectively. However, he wasn’t wearing a mask himself at the online conference, to at least encourage people! As usual, he praised the way “Islamic Republic of Iran has controlled the virus.” He said, “Although Iran is at the 10th and 9th spot in the world in terms of total number of cases and deaths, but it’s at 47th and 30th in terms of cases and deaths per 1 million population.” However, he forgot to mention Iran was one of the first countries to be hit hard by the virus and still report the highest number of cases/deaths per day per 1million population. The audacity of regime’s officials is beyond imagination.
Dr. Mardani, an infectious disease specialist and a member of the National Task Force, warned people that children could as well contract the disease and get sick. He said there are increased number of kids going to hospitals with gastrointestinal symptoms such as bloating, abdominal pain and diarrhea and may be prescribed antibiotics by the physician, but that’s wrong and a novel coronavirus test must be done immediately. We have reported of at least 3 kids dying from COVID-19 in Hormozgan earlier this month, a 2 and 10-year-old and a 20-day-old infant.
The list of critical provinces grows every day and more cities struggle with the disease. Zanjan officials announce a new wave of COVID-19 and Chabahar mandated wearing masks in government buildings. Basic reproduction rate (R0) and graphs show the disaster since day 1, regardless of what Islamic Republic officials kept telling the world.
R0: 1.28
Total: 220,180 (+2,456)
Dead: 10,364 (+125)
Healed: 180,661
Critical: 2,928 (+16)
Admitted: 29,155 (-478)
Tests: 1,583,542 (Number of labs wasn’t mentioned in today’s news. Officials may have finally figured out there are discrepancies when they lie.)
