While the entire country is struggling with coronavirus, Islamic Republic Health Minister, the person in charge of containing COVID-19, can’t stop his disinformation campaign about COVID-19 vaccine! He again claimed that Iran has pre-ordered 18million doses of vaccines, without mentioning from which company! He also contradicted his previous remarks about Iranian made vaccine.
He had said, “Clinical trial has been started,” followed by another official confirming this claim. Today, Saeed Namaki said, “hopefully, in the next few days, 2 of the vaccines would be approved for human trials and one of them will start shortly.” Apart from the vague and confusing statement, he said, “We are trying to import and develop necessary technology needed for developing the vaccine.” In that case, how 2 vaccines will be doing clinical trials soon?! It’s worth noting, Namaki’s false claims about vaccine was one of the main reasons for his research deputy to resign few days ago.
The hospitals continue to suffer from shortages of resources, including healthcare staff. Provinces keep breaking records in number of deaths and cases. In the meantime, the “lockdown” plan hasn’t been implemented as the authorities had hoped and now threatening people that it may take longer to lift restrictions if they don’t abide by the rules. However, people who can’t afford to miss a day at work, without the support of the government, are required to stay at home for 2 weeks!
Sima Sadat Lari continues her daily charade of providing daily manipulated data. According to her, 453 Iranians passed away due to COVID-19 in Iran in the past 24 hours. 12,460 tested positive for coronavirus in the same time. The entire country remains critical. Testing remains in the same 40,000 range. No report of the “rapid test kits” which were supposed to be distributed throughout the country this week to increase the daily testing capacity. Active cases keep increasing and critical cases have filled all ICU beds across Iran.
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) continues to rise while graphs illustrate the ongoing crisis in Iran for more than 9 months! Islamic Republic keeps hoping for a solution but the situation worsen by the day.
R0: 3.68
Total: 866,821 (+12,460)
Dead: 45,255 (+453)
Recovered: 610,406
Critical: 5,812 (+16)
Admitted: 211,160 (+5,046)
Tests: 5,828,307 (6.9% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Mona Hoobehfekr
