It’s all dreadful news and reports coming from Iran during COVID-19 crisis. The medicine smuggling bust got traction and many social media users started questioning authorities how this could happen. In response, an official from Ministry of Health requested the confiscated medicine to be returned to the Ministry so they could trace it to the origin. A smuggling operation at this scale could only mean big names were behind it, when Iranians have to go drugstore to drugstore not finding medicine or pay hefty prices in the black market! Of course, officials’ US sanction excuse was debunked once again!
In the meantime, the hospitals continue to struggle with the flood of patients. After 8 months and boastful claims of Islamic Republic officials including its president, testing remains one of the major problems. There’s also no way to know when a person has contracted the virus since there’s no contact tracing system in the country. When a patient is admitted to hospital, he’s been freely roaming around in society during his/her incubation period. However, IRGC could spend millions of dollars “inventing” a fake magnetic detector for coronavirus, Mostaan 110.
On the other hand, lack of transparency in data provided by the Ministry of Health has become a huge obstacle for anybody to analyze and recognize the hot spots to prevent spread of the virus! There is no local data provided, since the Ministry ordered local officials in late March not to release them. After so long, the regime is focused on “treatment” rather than prevention. No matter how many “protocols” are devised or enforced, as long as the theocratic regime only cares about its power and not Iranian lives, the situation would only worsen.
Today, the Ministry of Health Spokesperson announced 4,552 new cases of COVID-19 and 265 deaths confirmed by PCR test. Sima Sadat Lari also reported 30 provinces in critical condition. While tomorrow is “Imam Reza death anniversary,” Mashhad public transportation system was supposed to be closed, but the officials announced they’re operational, implicitly inviting people to use the system to get to “Imam Reza Shrine,” mourning his death! Another religious gathering when supposedly everything is “banned.”
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) jumps another point, graphs indicate the soaring number of active cases with nothing to stop it! Critical cases continue to rise while hospitals can’t accept any new patient. Private hospitals are on the verge of bankruptcy, writing a letter to Saeed Namaki asking for an urgent and decisive action about pricing their services and allowing elective surgeries!
R0: 1.78
Total: 522,387 (+4,552)
Dead: 29,870 (+265)
Healed: 420,910
Critical: 4,684 (+13)
Admitted: 71,607 (+1,431)
Tests: 4,454,570 (6.1% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
