Iranian Health Minister: We must prepare ourselves for more difficult days
Iran's Health Minister has warned of the possibility of a second wave of the coronavirus in the fall and winter of this year, describing the fight against the virus as a kind of chess game. The Deputy Health Minister has also stated that we must live a "peaceful" life with this virus.
Iranian Health Minister Saeed Namaki stated during a meeting on Monday, April 15, that the current wave of the coronavirus outbreak may be contained by June, but we will face a second wave in the fall.
According to IRNA, Namaki said at the Health Insurance Organization's directors' meeting held via video conference: "We are playing chess with the coronavirus. The virus's future behavior cannot be predicted."
However, he said that the coronavirus that comes in the second half of the year may be "more gentle and calmer than the current virus."
The Minister of Health also expressed hope that the first wave of the epidemic will be contained by late May or June, but said: "Let's not imagine that this virus will leave us alone. We may have a new outbreak of this epidemic in the fall and winter, and we must prepare ourselves for much more difficult days."
Iran's Health Minister has stated that even if a coronavirus vaccine is developed, it will not reach Iran for another two years. He said: "If those who produce it are very artistic, they produce it for themselves. We must also strive in this direction, but we cannot work with an optimistic outlook."
Saeed Namaki discussed the number of hospital beds in Iran and compared it with France, saying that in the most optimistic scenario, there are 1.6 beds per thousand people in Iran, while this figure is 6.6 beds in France.
He then said, referring to the decline in oil revenue, "There is also a possibility that the virus will mutate, so we must be prepared for the most difficult conditions."
The Minister of Health, however, also considered it possible that the coronavirus will become chronic like SARS and MERS, but its subsequent waves will not be "terrible and insidious."
“We have no such thing as herd immunity”
Simultaneously with the Health Minister's speech at the Health Insurance Directors' Summit, his deputy, Kianoush Jahanpour, held a video news conference.
In response to IRNA's question about herd immunity, Jahanpour said: "The unit of counting humans is not a herd, and we do not have anything called herd immunity."
The spokesperson for the Corona Response Headquarters continued: "The health system's strategy is not to create group immunity, and if it happens somewhere, a disease may overcome all human means, and this is a matter of necessity and not a choice, and such a thing is not on the agenda of the Ministry of Health."
The Deputy Minister of Health also said that up to 15 percent of the country's population may be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. He emphasized that "measures such as social distancing, education, restrictions, and monitoring are aimed at preventing a large segment of society from becoming infected and at providing us with time and opportunity to avoid imposing a burden on hospitals and medical centers."
In a method known as herd immunity, 60 to 70 percent of the population must be infected to make the entire community immune to the virus. This was the method that the Swedish government adopted, but after a while it made changes to it and agreed to implement some restrictions.
Jahanpour continued to express hope that the disease could be brought under control in the coming weeks, however, he emphasized: "We cannot say that the evil of this virus will be eradicated from humanity forever. The prediction is that we will have to live peacefully with this virus in the coming years."
“A false death certificate is a violation”
In unconfirmed news and on social media, this news is widely circulated that some hospitals and doctors, even though a person's coronavirus test was positive and their relatives were told that they died of coronavirus, write something else on the death certificate as the cause of death.
This news has attracted attention because international organizations consider Iran's statistics to be inaccurate. Especially regarding the mortality rate due to Corona, Iran's model is very different from other countries; while the average mortality rate in Italy is close to 13%, in the United Kingdom it is close to 12.5%, and in Spain it is slightly more than 10%, this figure in official Iranian statistics is only slightly more than 6%.
However, in response to a question about this, Kianoush Jahanpour said: "Who in Iran can ask a doctor to write something else as the cause of death? If a doctor does such a thing, it is a kind of negligence. If a certificate is recorded contrary to the information, it is considered an error and a violation. If someone advised a doctor to write something other than coronavirus on the death certificate, he must report to us who advised him, so that we can follow up on its origin."
He emphasized that "no institution in the Islamic Republic of Iran has advised doctors who stamp death certificates to write something else if the diagnosis was Covid-19."
Source: DW
