COVID-19 keeps its streak and breaks another daily record. Sima Sadat Lari announced 5,039 new cases have been confirmed by PCR tests in the past 24 hours, which is the highest number of daily cases since the epidemic began in Iran. She also reported 322 have died of coronavirus in the same time period. According to Ministry of Health, 30 provinces are in critical status, the same has been going on for months! Dr Mardani, a member of National Task Force, said that’s not even close to real numbers and must be multiplied by 2.5! That means 805 Iranians have died of COVID-19 since yesterday, 33 people per hour, almost 1 every 2 minutes!
If that’s not horrifying, Dr Tabarsi, head of Infectious ward at Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran, said, soon 600 per day deaths will be reported if the situation doesn’t get better. That means 1,500 deaths on a daily basis considering what Dr Mardani has said! Dr Haghdoost, Deputy Health Minister in Education and an epidemiologist, believes even if all protocols are followed 100% and the whole country goes into full lockdown, the daily death toll will remain this high for another 3-4 weeks!
On the other hand, Saeed Namaki, Health Minister, finally found somebody other than people to blame for the devastating coronavirus crisis in the country. He ranted and raved about how “others” haven’t done their job implementing protocols, not blocking roads as supposed to or fine people who don’t wear masks. He threatened he would release “names” if “they” want to blame the Ministry as the culprit for the COVID mess.
He added, “I, as the Health Minister, can’t handle the epidemic all by myself. I can’t continue to beg and plead to people and other organizations to do their parts. My colleagues will get tired and give up if this continues.” However, he was careful to add a stipulation, “they won’t go on the streets but they’ll go home!” Another sign that Islamic Republic can’t tolerate any kind of anti-regime gatherings at any level. It will erupt and create something like November 2019! He continued, “we’re going to be collecting corpses down the stream,” and “this pandemic will never be eradicated in the country,” if it continues like this.
Namaki started to “get these off his chest” right after some “parliament representatives” called the Minister and President “dumb and stupid” for where the country is headed as a whole asking for President’s head. Otherwise, Namaki isn’t worried about people’s lives. It’s been more than 8 months and he’s always blamed people for every single wave of the virus.
Shortage of medicine and cover up over smuggling medicine continues. Flu vaccine hasn’t been distributed yet while winter is approaching and we’re already in flu season. With the new study published showing cold weather would make the novel coronavirus more virulent and spread faster, the already broken down Iran healthcare system can’t afford more patients! The officials and regime’s apologists in western media keep trying to blame everything on US sanctions, but as we have reported many times, that’s not the case. It’s regime’s misplaced priorities which have caused decades of misery for Iranians, with the last 8 months in full display for the world to watch.
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) jumped 4 more points and together with graphs show the ongoing human catastrophe while Islamic Republic has no plan to contain the virus other than praying, waiting for a miracle and suffocating dissidents.
R0: 1.85
Total: 539,670 (+5,039)
Dead: 31,034 (+322)
Healed: 434,676
Critical: 4,810 (+39)
Admitted: 73,960 (+1,401)
Tests: 4,570,243 (6.1% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
Cover: Mohammad Ali Ghasemi
