Discrimination in Corona testing between officials and the public

Officials have been given free coronavirus tests, and not a day goes by without news of some of them testing positive in the country's media. But ordinary people should only take the coronavirus test if they have a fever above 37.5 degrees. What discrimination is there between officials and other people?

Discrimination in conducting coronavirus tests between officials and the public is so widespread that the country's official and state media have also spoken out against it.

In a report titled "Discrimination in Corona Testing; What's the Difference Between People and Officials?", IRNA News Agency reported on the existence of discrimination between people and officials in the principles of Corona care and hygiene, and wrote that in the first days of the Corona outbreak in Iran, when regular masks and disinfectant gel became scarce in pharmacies, masks and gel were distributed to members of parliament.

The Assembly of Experts has postponed its eighth annual session to another time and the Islamic Consultative Assembly has been declared closed for the next 10 days. This is while the custodians of pilgrimage and religious sites did not limit their activities despite the recommendations and approvals of the Ministry of Health.

Pilgrimage sites in religious cities in Iran, including Qom, which has been declared the epicenter of the coronavirus, continue to operate. The city of Qom was the first city to record a coronavirus infection and a death from the virus. The city's failure to quarantine it led to the spread of the virus in many parts of the country and neighboring countries, including Iraq.

Ali Akbar Hosseininejad, advisor to the guardianship of the shrine of Hazrat Masoumeh in Qom, said: "What is the need to close the shrine? People should be careful themselves."

Discrimination in testing 

But the most discrimination has been observed in conducting coronavirus testing. Officials have tested people who did not even have symptoms of the virus.

With the rapid spread of the coronavirus, the parliament's public relations department urged its members to get tested quickly. Health experts immediately came to the parliament to conduct coronavirus tests.

A doctor told IRNA that coronavirus testing is expensive and that testing city council members and parliament members while they still had no symptoms of coronavirus is "unethical" because, in a situation where coronavirus testing kits are in short supply, they are essential for patients in need.

But can ordinary Iranian citizens go to medical centers and get tested for coronavirus like the authorities?

A doctor who spoke to IRNA said: "For a patient suspected of having coronavirus to be hospitalized, they must first have a fever above 37.5 degrees Celsius and secondly, their blood oxygen saturation level must be below 90. If they have these conditions, they are considered a suspected case of coronavirus, and then they will take a PCR test from this patient."

What is not clearly stated in the country's media is that officials have not yet officially informed the public of the exact number of people infected with the coronavirus, the number of deaths, and the number of victims, and this has led to a decrease in trust in officials and the statistics they publish.

With the outbreak of the coronavirus, the price of masks in Iran immediately increased several times. The government took action to combat the “hoarding” and shortage of masks and took over their purchase and distribution. In order to organize the distribution of masks among citizens, the Ministry of Interior decided to purchase all the masks produced in the country.