The dire situation in Iran continues to worsen while Islamic Republic makes sure to hold “Imam Reza” mourning in his shrine in Mashhad which included thousands of people gathering around. Whether protocols were followed or not is irrelevant for many reasons. For example, people use public transport to get there, long lines for security checks which makes proper social distancing impossible, and it paints a normalized situation in people’s minds. That’s how regime’s duplicity and hypocrisy have been one of the reasons for ongoing and unstoppable COVID-19 crisis.
Iraj Harirchi, Deputy Health Minister, said 5,300 admitted patients in Tehran hospitals when 1,200 of them are in ICU, is worrisome. Harirchi said the rate of daily admission to recoveries has been constantly between 1.5 to 2. He emphasized there’s no effective medicine for COVID-19 and asked patients’ families to stop asking for “specific drugs since the healthcare staff use the Ministry’s protocols in treating patients.” Shortage of medicine when officials blame everything on US sanctions has become a major issue for public, but it was debunked when 19 trucks of smuggling medicine were busted in Iraq. Islamic Republic officials couldn’t make their stories straight, causing another chaos in “explaining” the smuggling operation. Head of FDA said “the medicine was not from Iran, Iran border was used as a transit route,” while a Deputy Health Minister said “the medicine was bought from drugstores.”
Sima Sadat Lari continues blaming people in her daily show where she reports the undercounted and widely discredited statistics. She asked people to cooperate and follow health protocols, when in reality none of the lockdown protocols have been enforced by the government! She admitted to the dreadful condition across the country, announcing 4,103 new COVID-19 cases and 253 deaths confirmed by PCR testing in the past 24 hours. At the same time, Raisi, Deputy Health Minister in Health Affairs, said on TV that definitely less than 15% of the population have contracted coronavirus so far. He refuted the idea of “herd immunity” saying millions could die in the process.
The number of active cases continue to rise while testing remains in the same range, one of the lowest per capita in the world. 8 months have passed since coronavirus epidemic was officially announced in Iran and still there’s no efficient plan to contain it. Tehran, and a few other provinces have extended their lockdown of “high risk businesses” for another week, but with no enforcement and late small interventions like these, only more dreadful situation could be imagined.
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) graphs confirm the ongoing crisis.
R0: 1.78
Total: 526,490 (+4,103)
Dead: 30,123 (+253)
Healed: 423,921
Critical: 4,721 (+37)
Admitted: 72,446 (+839)
Tests: 4,482,263 (6.1% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Mohsen Esmailzadeh
