Another day and another record broken by COVID-19 in Iran. The highest number of daily cases since the epidemic began 246 days ago! Sima Sadat Lari announced 5,616 confirmed cases of COVID-19 by PCR tests and 312 deaths in the past 24 hours. She finally admitted the entire country is critical, 27 provinces are in “red” status while 4 are “alarming.” Ministry of Health Spokesperson has said “we’re in war time” and 2-3 weeks strict lockdown seems necessary in this dreadful situation.
Saeed Namaki seems to have change his mind since yesterday. He had ranted about the catastrophe and how healthcare staff may give up soon and people would be dying left and right. Today, however, Health Minister said, “we shouldn’t scare people about shortage of beds.” He said, “Don’t say that in your interviews. We’re adding more beds for COVID-19 patients from other wards.” That’s when hospitals, especially in Tehran, has warned there’s no bed for new admissions!
Jan Babaei, Deputy Health Minister in Treatment Affairs, confirmed his boss’s rhetoric, “people shouldn’t worry about hospital beds.” According to him, only 1/4 of Tehran hospitals’ beds are occupied. On the other hand, a member of National Task Force and head of Planning Committee, admitted Tehran is in dire situation and all beds (including elective patients’ beds) will be occupied by COVID-19 patients and adding field hospitals would be the only option!
Jan Babaei also said admitted patients are in worse condition compared to previous waves because people wait for a long time before going to hospital! He didn’t say what the reason might be for that behavior. Insurance officials admit 5,400,000Toman is the average cost of treatment for somebody with government insurance, majority of Iranians can’t afford spending 2 months income on treatment so waiting till last minute is their only option.
Health experts believe Iran may have missed the golden period to curtail the ever mutating coronavirus. Dr Kadivar, an infectious disease specialist, says the government hasn’t done enough to control the virus and at some points have made wrong decisions or no decision at all.
October 26 and 29 are holidays in Iran again, and despite officials blaming everything on people and their traveling, no travel ban has been announced. The last travel ban was a disaster and ineffective, since it gave people enough warning to get on the road, it wasn’t implemented properly either.
After 8 months, government has decided to increase the number of daily tests! While it hasn’t increased significantly yet, Deputy Health Minister in Health Affairs announced the number of cases would rise even more in the upcoming days, but “that’s not important!” According to Dr Raisi, admissions and CFR (Case Fatality Ratio) are important factors in COVID-19!
Indulging the Deputy revealed staggering numbers! Iran is currently the 3rd country in the world based on CFR with 5.8% of cases dying of COVID-19, from the beginning of epidemic in the country. If we calculate it based on “the new Death rate” revealed by Dr Mardani, that would be 14.37%, highest in the world! Those numbers are 6.2% and 15.5% in the past 10 days. On the other hand, regardless of the number of tests, the positivity rate has reached 15.75% in the past 10 days while the average has been around 10% since April 13, when the Ministry first released the number of tests performed.
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) jumped another 2 points and together with graphs continue to be the best indicator of human catastrophe in Iran, even though they’re based on discredited, undercounted and manipulated data by the Islamic Republic Ministry of Health. Active cases continue to rise and critical cases increased.
R0: 1.87
Total: 545,286 (+5,616)
Dead: 31,346 (+312)
Healed: 438,709
Critical: 4,861 (+51)
Admitted: 75,231 (+1,271)
Tests: 4,599,554 (6.1% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
