COVID-19 keeps on raging through Iran while Islamic Republic continues watching it. Halfhearted lockdown orders without enforcement, shortage of medicine, hospital beds and healthcare staff are just some of the reasons for the worsening crisis in the country. Medicine shortage has deteriorated over the past few weeks when officials’ promises in distributing enough insulin in the market has not been delivered. Flu vaccine has had the same fate. With diabetic patients at the high risk group for coronavirus infection, more people are needed to be admitted but with shortage of beds and nurses their needs will go unanswered.
Islamic Republic keeps blaming US sanctions but the medicine smuggling bust in Iraq and existence of medicine in black markets have caused more and more people believing that the regime is making money by trading people’s lives! In the meantime, Saeed Namaki admits the protocols have been enforced poorly. Dr Zali, head of Tehran Corona Committee hopes Tehran Police will be more vigorous in implementing lockdown and fining people who don’t wear mask when it’s mandatory throughout the capital.
Fars, Qazvin, Zanjan, Kerman, Markazi, North Khorasan and Qom announce their worst days in terms of number of daily deaths, since the epidemic has began more than 8 months ago! Furthermore, Epidemiology Committee of National Task Force released its weekly report ending on October 16, announcing 7 provinces have a steady uptrend indicating start of a new wave!
Healthcare staff are spending their worst days, with more and more getting ill due to the virus and hospitals not able to hire fresh staff. There have been more than 160 deaths among physicians, nurses and other healthcare workers across the country. Today, head of Labbafinejad Hospital in Tehran died of COVID-19.
National Task Force has made no new decision, travel ban between provinces is lifted and everything is back to where it was before Thursday! More traffic, more traveling, more cases, more admissions and more deaths. The only item remaining in the same range is number of daily PCR tests! Even so, North Khorasan announced in the past few weeks, its positivity rate has reached 70%! That shows how prevalent and virulent the novel coronavirus has become in the hospitable environment Islamic Republic has provided for it.
Sima Sadat Lari reported 3,890 new cases and 252 deaths confirmed by PCR test. The undercounted data don’t include cases who can’t afford to take the test or were diagnosed by clinical signs/symptoms. Active cases are on the rise. Critical cases can’t be admitted to ICU anymore, IRGC and Army had been ordered by Khamenei to serve COVID-19 patients from 10 days ago but local reports suggest they haven’t started yet!
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) and graphs indicate the crisis is unstoppable and the theocratic regime has made matters worse by its propaganda, normalization of the situation earlier in the pandemic, religious gatherings, premature reopenings, schools reopening,…And now by not providing vital medicine like insulin.
R0: 1.78
Total: 530,380 (+3,890)
Dead: 30,375 (+252)
Healed: 427,400
Critical: 4,744 (+23)
Admitted: 72,605 (+159)
Tests: 4,511,154 (6.1% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Mehdi Marizad
