Tag: Iran

Iran on Monday reported 117 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, bringing the official total number of fatalities to 2,757.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour announced the tolls in a news conference and said 3,186 more cases had been confirmed in the past day, raising total infections to 41,495.

The Islamic republic is one of the countries worst hit by the virus, which originated in China.

Iran has been scrambling to contain COVID-19’s spread since it reported its first cases on February 19.

After weeks of refraining from imposing lockdown or quarantine measures, Tehran decided Wednesday to ban all intercity travel until at least April 8, but some in the establishment have argued it is too little, too late.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said at a daily news briefing that 117 more people had died from the virus over the past 24 hours and 3,186 new cases had been confirmed.

According to Jahanpour, 13,911 of those hospitalised because of the virus have recovered, while 3,511 are in a critical condition.

There is no official lockdown in Iran’s cities although the government has repeatedly urged Iranians to stay home to contain the spread of the virus.

“Coronavirus could have been more quickly contained, if the health ministry’s expert opinion regarding implementing social distancing and social limitations was considered sooner,” Iran’s judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying.

Raisi, an ultra-conservative who ran against Rouhani in the 2017 presidential election, added that “time is of the essence” and that people started “cooperating” only after authorities appeared serious.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a veteran conservative and recent MP-elect who also stood against Rouhani, said that the current administration is mishandling the situation.

On Twitter, he said the government’s “inefficient management” pattern has become evident during the outbreak through “ignoring reality, unjustified optimism, sessions once per week and not utilising people’s potential”.

He accused Rouhani of “worsening crises, and then asking for help and putting the blame on others”.

The wave of criticism came after Rouhani called on those “who might become officials in a month or two” to assist the outbreak response, indirectly pointing to Ghalibaf who is yet to enter parliament.

“This is not a time for gathering followers. This is not a time for political war,” he said.

AFP

A senior Iranian official Tuesday ruled out “foreign” help on the ground to deal with the coronavirus epidemic after an offer from a France-based medical charity, as the country’s death toll from the illness neared 2,000.

“Due to Iran’s national mobilisation against the virus and the full use of the medical capacity of the armed forces, it is not necessary for now for hospital beds to be set up by foreign forces, and their presence is ruled out,” Alireza Vahabzadeh, advisor to Iran’s health minister, said on Twitter.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) had said Sunday that it planned to send a nine-member team and equipment to set up a 50-bed hospital, stirring opposition from ultra-conservative circles in the Islamic republic who charged that MSF staff would serve as “spies”.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour earlier said a record 1,762 new cases have been confirmed in Iran over the past 24 hours and 24,811 people are now known to have been infected with the new coronavirus.

He announced 122 new deaths from the virus, raising the official toll to 1,934 in one of the world’s worst hit countries.

Iran has the fourth highest official death toll from the coronavirus after Italy, China and Spain but, unlike those countries, it has yet to impose any lockdown on its citizens.

On the contrary, the country is in the midst of the two-week Persian New Year holiday when the country’s roads fill with people visiting family.

Despite the authorities’ appeals for people to stay home and the closure of shopping and leisure centres, many people have taken to the roads as usual this year.

Jahanpour, however, announced that when government offices reopen on Tuesday, many civil servants will be working from home.

“Only around a third of government staff are authorised to work in the office and only for administrative tasks vital to the public,” he said, adding that all offices would practise “social distancing”.

The country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has urged Iranians to follow state instructions “so that Almighty God will put an end to this calamity for the Iranian people, for all Muslim nations and for all mankind”.

– ‘Sanctions should be eased’ –
On Tuesday, the UN rights chief called for any sanctions imposed on countries like Iran facing the new coronavirus pandemic to be “urgently re-evaluated” to avoid pushing strained medical systems into collapse.

Iran has been under crippling US sanctions in connection with its nuclear programme.

“At this crucial time, both for global public health reasons, and to support the rights and lives of millions of people in these countries, sectoral sanctions should be eased or suspended,” Michelle Bachelet said.

Even before the pandemic, she pointed out that human rights reports had repeatedly emphasised the impact of sectorial sanctions on access to essential medicines and medical equipment in Iran, including respirators and protective gear for healthcare workers.

Bachelet’s office stressed that more than 50 Iranian medics had died since the first COVID-19 case was detected in the country five weeks ago.

Adding to Iran’s woes, floods caused by heavy rainfall since Sunday, mainly in western provinces, have killed at least 12 people and left two others missing, a spokesman for Iran’s rescue services told AFP.

Mojtaba Khaledi said that warnings have been issued of more heavy rains for later this week in western Iran.

A 103-year-old woman in Iran has recovered after being infected with the new coronavirus, state media reported, despite overwhelming evidence the elderly are most at risk from the disease.

The unnamed woman had been hospitalised in the central city of Semnan for about a week, IRNA news agency said.

But she was “discharged after making a complete recovery”, Semnan University of Medical Sciences head Navid Danayi was quoted as saying by IRNA late Tuesday.

The woman was the second elderly patient in Iran to have survived the disease.

The other was a 91-year-old man from Kerman, in the southeast of Iran, the news agency said.

After being sick for three days, he recovered on Monday despite having pre-existing medical conditions including high blood pressure and asthma, it added.

The report did not say how the pair were treated.

Since Iran announced its first deaths on February 19, the novel coronavirus has spread to all of the country’s 31 provinces and killed nearly 1,000 people.

The elderly are the most vulnerable to the disease, which first emerged in China late last year.

The World Health Organization this month estimated the novel coronavirus kills 3.4 percent of all those infected.

But for people aged over 80 the fatality rate was 21.9 percent, according to a report the WHO carried out with the Chinese authorities.

AFP