Corona Accounts for 20% of Daily Deaths in Iran; ’25 Provinces in Red and Alert Status’
Iran’s Health Ministry spokesperson announced that with 179 additional deaths due to coronavirus infection, the official death toll from the disease in the country has reached 13,211 people.
Sima Lari said on Tuesday, July 15th that in the past 24 hours, 2,521 additional coronavirus patients have been identified.
Among these individuals, 1,820 people, or more than half of them, have been hospitalized and 3,389 COVID-19 patients are in critical condition in hospitals across the country.
With the inclusion of the past 24 hours’ figures, the total number of coronavirus cases in Iran has reached 262,173 people.
The daily announcement of coronavirus cases and deaths in Iran continues amid serious doubts about the accuracy of these figures, with independent sources reporting based on vital statistics and cemetery records that the death toll among patients in Iran is several times higher.
Lari also discussed the status of Iran’s provinces, stating that East and West Azerbaijan, Ilam, Bushehr, Razavi Khorasan, Khuzestan, Zanjan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, Golestan, Mazandaran, and Hormozgan are in red status.
According to him, the provinces of Tehran, Fars, Ardabil, Isfahan, Alborz, South Khorasan, Sistan and Baluchestan, Kerman, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Lorestan, Hamadan, Yazd, and North Khorasan are also in alert status.
Iraj Harirchi, Deputy Health Minister, announced that “one-fifth” of the daily death toll in Iran is related to coronavirus patients.
According to Iran’s IRNA news agency on Tuesday, he stated in a meeting of the coronavirus control headquarters in Hamadan province: “Approximately 1,050 people die daily in the country, with more than 200 of them being coronavirus patients”.
Harirchi considered these figures “a serious and alarming warning bell” and said that “41 percent” of new cases are due to family gatherings and “51 percent” of the remainder are related to families who have brought the disease into their homes from outside.
He also warned about residents of red-status provinces traveling to other areas to escape the disease, referring to such travels as a “time bomb” for the white-status provinces that are their destinations.
Meanwhile, Mehr news agency reported, citing the director general of public relations and international affairs of the Medical System Organization, that currently the highest number of coronavirus patients hospitalized in Iranian hospitals are under 50 years of age.
Hosein Karmmanpour, in a note, listed three characteristics of “familial infection,” “deaths of young people,” and “exhaustion of medical staff” as features of the second wave of coronavirus in Iran.
He warned that “exhaustion of medical staff, the anxiety of patients’ companions, and the lowering age of mortality are like sparks in a powder keg”.
The Islamic Republic government made wearing masks in public and covered places mandatory six months after coronavirus broke out in Iran.
Iraj Harirchi, Deputy Health Minister of Iran, stated: If 95 percent of people wear masks, mask usage would be “more effective” than even vaccines.
Source: Radio Farda
