After months of being in hiding and having all his meetings canceled or holding them online, today, members of National Corona Combating Task Force were summoned to Khamenei’s place to have an in-person meeting! That alone should paint a clear picture of COVID-19 crisis in Iran. The “COVID-in-Chief” who asked people to pray for coronavirus to go away and “not to make a big deal out of it,” the person who called COVID-19 a biological attack by the US and Israel with the help of jinns against Islamic Republic, sat miles away from top officials of the country, including the “President” and Health Minister, saying:
He asked the National Task Force to be more strict on implementing protocols and establish a base to supervise the implementations. He had other “recommendations” as well: Ministry of Health must be obeyed by all other organizations and people at all COVID-19 related issues, educating people in neighborhoods with the help of Basij, careful screening and stricter checking at border crossings. The problem is, these all have been said before in his previous “orders” and “online meetings” but nothing has been done. Tehran City Council sent a letter to Khamenei’s office months ago asking for money to get more buses and metro cars but they didn’t even received a response. It’s been more than 8 months, nobody has taken control of the crisis but chaos!
The novel coronavirus continues to ravage through prisons like other communities in the country. Unfortunately, Islamic Republic Judiciary has been ignoring the prisoners’ lives and every day new political activists are sent in without any screening or quarantine, playing with their lives. Horrifying situation in prisons is not a secret. Today, HRNA reported in Uromiyeh prison, which at times holds 15 people in a small cell with 6 beds, all top officials including the warden, Chief security officer and head of clinic have tested positive for COVID-19!
Right after this meeting, 43 counties in the country which according to Ministry of Health Spokesperson have the most cases of COVID-19 would go under lockdown from Monday, October 26 for a week, which could be extended if needed! Tehran, Karaj and other major cities and counties grappled with the virus are not in the list. Just a show of taking action! Tehran remain under previous lockdown protocols which are not enforced properly. Tehran Chief of Police said they would start fining people more from now on!
Basic Reproduction Rate (R0) increased another point while graphs depict the ever rising active cases. Testing passed 30,000 mark for the first time, but still Iran is among the lowest test per capita nations hit hard with the coronavirus. Based on widely discredited stats provided by the Ministry of Health, 5,814 people tested positive and 335 died of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. Sima Sadat Lari also announced the entire country in critical condition.
Iran has been in critical COVID-19 status for the past 8 months, but now it’s become impossible even for Islamic Republic to cover it up!
R0: 1.94
Total: 562,705 (+5,814)
Dead: 32,320 (+335)
Healed: 450,891
Critical: 4,952 (+19)
Admitted: 79,494 (+1,273)
Tests: 4,689,118 (6.1% of the population, assuming each test was performed on 1 person)
