While Khamenei didn’t even mention anything about coronavirus crisis in Iran in his meeting with top Islamic Republic officials, COVID-19 broke another daily record. Sima Sadat Lari announced 13,721 have tested positive for the deadly virus while 483 have died from it since yesterday. According to her manipulated data, this is a new record for the number of cases in 24 hours. Ministry of Health Spokesperson explained COVID-19 situation in Fars province today, saying the deaths and cases are above the national average. Head of Shiraz Medical University said 15% of fatalities are among the young. He also confirmed record breaking number of deaths in the province. Despite all that, Sadat Lari categorized Fars in “orange” category and not red.
In the meantime, Tehran Corona Combating Committee reports 59-70% decrease in inner-city traffic during the day and between 9PM-4AM curfew, respectively. According to Dr Zali, this decrease won’t show any effect in number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths between 11-40 days! However, Dr Kermanpour, head of Public Relations Office at Iran Medical Council claimed the number of hospitalizations has decreased in Tehran since the “2-week lockdown” has begun on November 21.
Dr Zali admitted the situation is devastating for many businesses and many people can’t afford to stay at home. He said he’s submitted a request to National Task Force for expediting support for struggling business owners. However, the government hasn’t done anything about those businesses for 9 months! Even today, Khamenei only repeated his usual rhetoric, threatened EU and US and said sanctions should be circumvented by any means necessary until US gives up! Apparently, it doesn’t matter how many Iranians have to sacrifice their lives for Islamic Republic.
According to local reports, many business owners are open to customers “secretly” because they can’t afford to close down. Some provinces, including Semnan, report the increasing number of customers at banks since most people are working from home and have the time! Raisi, National Task Force Spokesman says there would be a discussion about “remote working” and who would have the authorization tomorrow in the cabinet meeting!
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) reached 3.81 while graphs indicate the ever growing number of active cases, critical cases and deaths across the country! Testing remains in the 40,000 range while the positivity rate increased to 32.06 from 30.92% the day before.
R0: 3.81
Total: 880,542 (+13,721)
Dead: 45,738 (+483)
Recovered: 617,715
Critical: 5,824 (+12)
Admitted: 217,089 (+5,929)
Tests: 5,871,098 (7.0% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
