Arbain when Shias mourn 40th day of “Imam Hossin” death, is holiday and an opportunity for people to travel. The officials including the President of Islamic Republic and head of National Task Force know that very well but despite them complaining about people traveling and increasing number of infections, admissions and deaths, there still hasn’t been any plan to ban traveling between cities or even provinces. In 15 days there will be a long weekend with 5 days off, but there will be no plan for that either, just because there must be a scapegoat for officials to blame the COVID-19 crisis in Iran, something other than Islamic Republic incompetency and corruption.
All provincial authorities have been warning about the rising numbers of patients and deaths, in addition to exhausted healthcare staff and shortage of beds. Rouhani, on the other hand, has only said there are some fines and punishment designated for any entity, employee or person who doesn’t follow health protocols. He didn’t give any specifics about what these “fines” are and who is enforcing them.
Deputy Health Minister in Treatment Affairs admits schools reopening was a mistake and ask students not to attend schools in-person as much as possible and use online classes. Jan Babaie also expresses his concern over increasing number of active cases and deaths, especially with the holidays approaching and possible concurrent infections with flu and common cold. However, he says closures and restrictions on businesses must be the last resort! He didn’t mention what criteria should be met for that stage, when today the record for the highest daily cases of COVID-19 was broken.
Sima Sadat Lari announced the highest daily cases, 3,825 and 211 deaths since yesterday. Active cases keep rising, breaking previous day’s record, and 30 of 31 provinces are considered critical, based on Ministry of Health’s scrutinized and undercounted data. Critical cases closing in on the highest numbers, even though this stat is discredited. Testing remains a major issue, it is only done on symptomatic patients who go to the hospitals and according to officials the majority of cases prefer to stay home or not even admit that they’re sick. Because they don’t want to lose any day at work.
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) increased another 2 points indicating even worse days approaching Iranians, while the government doesn’t make any move to contain the virus. Graphs confirm the ongoing coronavirus crisis for more than 224 days in Iran.
R0: 1.62
Total: 461,044 (+3,825)
Dead: 26,380 (+211)
Healed: 383,368
Critical: 4,121 (+28)
Admitted: 51,296 (+1,202)
Tests: 4,043,130 (4.8% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Melika Zakeri
