90 days since the official announcement of Coronavirus outbreak in Iran have passed but the crisis is not even close to be over! Khuzestan’s situation is getting worse by hour, other provinces are joining it as well but still Rouhani brags about their perfect crisis management skills! In today’s cabinet meeting he said, “We have a difficult year ahead but still what some say is not true and we can pass this time together!” He added, “We’ve had a good progress so far and we are in the containing stage of the coronavirus.” He admitted some provinces are in deep crisis saying, “Even in those provinces if people were to cooperate and follow the social distancing protocols we wouldn’t be in this situation.” Those provinces are the ones which had low number of patients before the country reopened on April 11, including Khuzestan, Hormozgan and North Khorasan.
Like usual, people are to blame! Health Minister has sent a fully authorized representative to Khuzestan, just like he had done so for Gilan in the beginning of the outbreak when Gilan was the epicenter of the disease and the officials were denying it! Now the same is happening in Khuzestan. According to Alireza Afshar, Khuzestan is in critical circumstances, more than a fourth of daily confirmed cases are from this province in the past few days and healthcare staff are exhausted for working multiple shifts every day. Imagine multiple layer protection gears, masks,… in the heat of Khuzestan, Hormozgan, Bushehr,…The healthcare system didn’t have the capability of handling the epidemic and now it is overwhelmed at all levels.
He confirmed shortage of ICU beds and ventilators in the province. Quite the opposite of what Rouhani and other officials have been saying for weeks that everything is fine and Iran is “exporting” ventilators to other countries. Rouhani had said multiple times before that there are 2,800 empty ICU beds across the country. Afshar added, “The Ministry has sent 20 ventilators to Ahvaz, Abadan, Dezful, Shooshtar and Behbahan, which 20 of them were for Ahvaz!” Yes, this is not a typo, that’s what he’s said, according to ISNA.
Reports of people not following the rules and being on the streets for unnecessary businesses are published by IRNA, the official news agency of the government. Khuzestan and other southern provinces in Iran have hot climate, and this may be another alarm for the officials who were hoping the virus would die down in summer by itself!! Despite all this, Afshar didn’t forget to say, “We’ve done a great job in controlling Corona.”
2,346 new cases confirmed today which is the highest figure since April 5 and 64 have passed away due to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. Other provinces are on the verge of disaster but the government is not doing anything to prevent more deaths and infection other than gloating over nothing! Even with the falsified and manipulated officials stats, Graphs show the ongoing crisis and reproduction rate (R0) remain above 1.
R0: 1.23
Total: 126,949 (+2,346)
Dead: 7,183 (+64)
Healed: 98,808
Critical: 2,673 (-25)
Admitted: 20,958 (+647)
Tests: 731,213 (Number of labs wasn’t mentioned in today’s news. Officials may have finally figured out there are discrepancies when they lie.)
Iran International Death Toll: 13,193 (Last updated on April 25)
