Updated @21:00 local time: Saudi Arabia confirms its first case, a person with travel history to Iran.
Updated @16:00 local time: This can’t get any worse. The Health Ministry doesn’t have a breakdown of confirmed cases for each province for today!! But they know 532 cases are confirmed since yesterday afternoon and 11 more dead! Let that sink in for a moment. Although, today, Jahanpour wasn’t present at the press conference like days before, because he lost his father yesterday. But we shall see if this is going to be a new way of announcing the results or just a substitution problem.
Also, only 4312 tests have been performed throughout the country, with total of 1501 confirmed.
Total: 1501
Dead: 66
Healed: 291
The spokesperson also said, it looks like the number of confirmed cases and healed are nearly balanced now! Which honestly, I have no idea how that is possible.
And here is a graph showing the number of cases (confirmed:Blue , Healed: Green , Dead:Red) according to “official” stat which is not reliable at all (continue reading to see why).
March 2 is here and as we’re waiting for the official news, there are some disturbing facts coming out of Iran regarding Coronavirus. Iran International, a London based Persian news agency reported that according to their credible sources, COVID-19 claimed the lives of 7 in Arak, 8 in Qom and 1 in Qazvin in the past few hours, bringing the total number of deaths to 408.
On the other hand, Dr Fazeli, head of Golestan University of Medical Sciences, said 594 cases of Coronavirus have been admitted in Golestan province, N Iran. He said the Health Ministry doesn’t count these cases because their test results were not positive, when in fact there could be false negatives and sampling errors for the test. He also depicts CT scans of the patients’ lungs showing the bleeding because of COVID-19. That explains the coughing we all have heard and seen in videos.
He also says, he warned the Ministry way back about Coronavirus but they kept saying to wait. After a while, they said it looks like Golestan is an epicenter of the disease. But according to the latest official numbers, Golestan has only 24 confirmed cases!!
Health Minister, Saeid Namaki, announced “For the first time in the world, we’re going to send more than 300,000 groups, with the help of Basij (an IRGC branch) to every single homes in the country to detect cases and will have hospitals ready to admit those patients.” I have a few questions though, how is this possible when the main problem is spread of this highly contagious disease? How are they going to be admitted when all hospitals are already at their full capacity? And so on…
The Premier Football League (soccer) and lower leagues are finally suspended until further notice. Mashhad Mayor, Mohammadreza Kalaei, asked all residents to stay home. He said the situation is red and nobody should leave their home unless absolutely necessary. He continued, “if people don’t take this seriously, we will definitely have a big problem.” He used “Home is the safest place” hashtag in his tweet.
Abadan officials are banned from exiting the city in order to stop spreading the disease to other parts of Khuzestan province.
A catastrophe is in the making. More and more prisoners are reporting cases in Greater Tehran Prison, Orumiyeh, Karaj and other facilities across the country. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a suspected case of Coronavirus in prison, according to her husband. She is charged and sentenced for espionage for 5 years in prison. HRNA reports majority of political prisoners have not been given leave of absence. According to the report, Amir Hossein Moradi, one of November Iran protests’ detainees is tested positive and was sent to Yaaft Abad Hospital with 19 other prisoners.
The situation is getting worse day by day, even internationally. 3 more Iranians were found infected in Toronto, Canada. Andrew Coumo announced the first confirmed case in New York, an Iranian woman in her late 30s traveling from Iran.
The Islamic Republic is not willing or equipped to take care of its own people. The regime cares more about its pride in the international community and playing the victim. Some journalists in the west who play the role of regime’s apologists are spreading the idea that the sanctions should be lifted to help Iranians, while in fact, there is no sanctions on food or medicine. Even recently, US has made it much easier through Switzerland to have humanitarian aids transferred. This is just another attempt by Javad Zarif and IRGC to get their money and spend it on anything including terrorism, but ordinary people.