With the entire country in critical status, the Ministry of Health Spokesperson announced 11,517 new cases of COVID-19 in Iran while 457 have passed away due to the deadly virus in the past 24 hours. The undercounted and discredited stats of the Ministry doesn’t stop Sima Sadat Lari from reporting them every day. She also mentioned all 31 provinces in red (27) or alarming (4) situation.
While Sadat Lari named Fars as one of the “alarming” provinces, the province officials keep announcing it as red and today, Shiraz Medical University announced the situation is “beyond critical” in the province. Deputy head of the university said the province must go on complete lockdown for 2 weeks.
Tehran’s situation is getting worse by the minute and its officials demand the government to prepare for a complete lockdown too. According to Deputy Health Minister is Treatment Affairs, Tehran lockdown would be discussed on Saturday in the National Task Force meeting. Jan Babaei admitted the 6PM curfew is not effective in lowering the inner-city traffic! He said, all parts of the spread chain must be broken before anything is effective.
All provinces report record breaking cases and deaths with full hospitals. Officials and health experts warn about gatherings and lowering traffic in the cities, but at the same time, Friday Prayers will be held in multiple cities across the country! The same religious gatherings which led the country to today’s dreadful situation!
A member of Epidemiology subcommittee of Tehran Corona Combating Committee admitted the “trial & error” approach the government has been managing the COVID-19 crisis with, has made people skeptical about all protocols and they don’t trust the decisions made by authorities anymore. Dr Hamid Souri said the “total lockdown” plan could be the last resort but before that the country must be prepared! The government must be providing for the homeless and people in need before closing down an entire area or city.
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) continues to rise indicating the ongoing coronavirus crisis in Iran. Graphs show the overwhelming number of active cases and more than capacity critical cases. Testing remains the main hurdle in early detection and quarantining cases. Instead of increasing daily number of tests, today, about 1,500 less tests were performed!
R0: 2.61
Total: 726,585 (+11,517)
Dead: 40,121 (+457)
Recovered: 541,566
Critical: 5,614 (+13)
Admitted: 144,898 (+5,599)
Tests: 5,384,988 (6.4% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Rahim Bani Asad Azad
