Iran's Health Minister warns of new coronavirus surge
97 coronavirus patients have died in Iran in the past 24 hours, 21 of whom were in Mazandaran. Saeed Namaki has warned against normalizing the situation, and the commander of the coronavirus response headquarters in Tehran has called for a several-day lockdown of the capital.
On Wednesday, January 14, the spokesperson for the Iranian Ministry of Health announced the total number of COVID-19 patients at 1,305,339, and reported 6,317 new cases in the past 24 hours. According to Sima Sadat Lari, 97 people have died from the disease in the past 24 hours, and 4,469 of the infected are in critical condition.
He identified seven cities in Mazandaran Province and two cities in Golestan Province as having red status, and 30 other cities in the country as having orange status.
At the same time, the Minister of Health announced that 21 of the deaths in the past 24 hours were residents of Mazandaran. He called Mazandaran “the province with the most problems” and said that if it were not for this number of deaths, we would be heading towards deaths below 50. Saeed Namaki, expressing great concern about the new surge in the disease, added: “Unfortunately, with the imaginary peace that has arisen in people regarding the reduction in deaths and hospitalizations, they are moving towards normalization and simplicity, and this issue has greatly worried our colleagues.”
Tehran, which is different from other cities in Iran due to its dense population and concentration of traffic and business, is also facing severe air pollution. Alireza Zali, commander of the Tehran Province Coronavirus Response Headquarters, called a few-day lockdown “very helpful” in these circumstances, but added that one should be careful about leaving the city during the lockdown.
Acknowledging the dangerous border of Tehran's air pollution and the phenomenon of the inversion layer, Zali said: "Those who have a history of allergic respiratory diseases and asthma will have their diseases flare up with the intensification of air pollution, and the intensification of respiratory diseases will also lead to the infection of the coronavirus... In some parts of the city, this inversion has reached a distance of 200 meters."
Meanwhile, the head of Iran's Pasteur Institute defended the joint production of a vaccine between Iran and Cuba, saying: "Since we are confident that the first and second phases of the clinical trials of this vaccine in Cuba have had no complications, we can be sure that the third phase of its trials, which will be conducted simultaneously in Iran and Cuba, will have very good results, and we can then enter the general vaccination phase."
It has been announced that the administration of the aforementioned vaccine will begin in Iran in late March.
The Leader of the Islamic Republic has opposed the import of vaccines made in the United States and Britain, and the Minister of Health has also expressed doubts about the effectiveness of these vaccines and the possibility of "disrupting the body's immune system" during the injection of mRNA-based vaccines.
Source: DW
