Corona in Iran; Over 3,500 Cases, Schools Closed Until End of Year
According to the Interior Minister, the corona control plan will begin on March 6 (15th of Esfand) in three or four points in Iran with the highest level of contamination. The number of corona victims in Iran has reached 107 people and all schools and universities have been closed until the end of the year.
Saeid Namaki, Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education, announced that a plan aimed at identifying all cases of infection with the new coronavirus throughout Iran started at dawn on Thursday, March 6 (15th of Esfand).
He says there are more than 17,000 health houses and more than 9,000 comprehensive health centers in cities and villages in Iran, and it is planned that with “organized work” in these centers and with the cooperation of Basij bases, cases suspected of coronavirus infection, known as COVID-19, will be identified and treated.
According to the Young Journalists Club news agency, the Minister of Health announced on March 2 (11th of Esfand) about “launching a national mobilization against corona” by sending 300,000 screening teams to the homes of all citizens, and said this plan would be implemented in Iran “for the first time in the world.”
Saeid Namaki had said: “300,000 specialized teams have been mobilized for house-to-house screening of citizens and identification of patients suspected of corona across the country; starting from Tuesday we will visit every single home of the people and identify patients, if necessary, patients will be referred to the relevant centers and transferred to hospitals in the next stage.”
The plan faced severe criticism from many experts who expressed concern that involving hundreds of thousands of untrained personnel with minimal resources could deepen the crisis of coronavirus spread.
House-to-House Screening Plan Cancelled
Apparently, the Ministry of Health, partly due to these concerns, abandoned the previous plan and, with a two-day delay, started implementing a new plan in which visits to “every single home of the people” were eliminated.
The IRIB news agency reported that according to the Minister of Health, in the new plan, people with symptoms of the new coronavirus infection are invited to “examination centers” “so that first they receive the necessary medicines and training for home care and then their condition is checked with daily follow-up”.
Saeid Namaki said Wednesday evening in a joint meeting with the Basij Organization commander: “These people will be evaluated every day through a system or by phone contact, if after 3 days they show no physical improvement they will be referred to hospitals, or if needed, with the presence of a treatment team, homes will be disinfected and other family members isolated.”
The Minister of Health said this plan will initially be implemented “in three or four points in the country” and later, after three days, this work will be pursued in other provinces. He added that in cities that are experiencing severe coronavirus outbreaks, movement control is also being carried out.
So far, the city of Qom has been identified as the main center of coronavirus outbreak in Iran, but cases of infected people identified in other cities such as Rasht and Tehran are also sharply increasing.
Quarantine, an Enemy Plot?
Some experts believe that if the city of Qom had been quarantined in time, controlling the new coronavirus would have faced greater success. Some clergy, senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and government officials have opposed this, and some have called it an enemy conspiracy.
President Hassan Rouhani, at the seventh meeting of Esfand cabinet session, said there is no decision to quarantine any place or city and people should not pay attention to rumors.
According to the Tasnim News Agency, Rouhani said: “Decisions regarding closure or any restrictions due to corona are made by the National Corona Combat Headquarters. Corona should not become a weapon of our enemies to shut down work and production in the country.”
Kianoosh Jahanpour, head of the Public Relations and Information Center of the Ministry of Health, wrote on Thursday afternoon in a tweet that quarantine of a city or province is “neither possible nor desirable” and the only way is to convince citizens to “reduce interactions.”
The city of Wuhan, the center of Hubei Province in China, is known as the epicenter of COVID-19 outbreak, and so far the most cases of infection and deaths from the new coronavirus have been reported in this region.
IRGC Commander: Corona is Probably an American Biological Attack
Nevertheless, exactly how the coronavirus entered Iran and spread in the city of Qom has not yet been clearly determined. Hossein Salami, Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on the morning of March 6 (15th of Esfand) at a ceremony in Kerman, referring to the corona outbreak, that Iran “is engaged in a biological war” but will “end the year with stability and steadfastness.”
According to the ISNA news agency, Hossein Salami said: “Today, even in fighting this virus, which may be the result of an American biological attack that initially spread in China and then to Iran and other parts of the world, we will be victorious and America should know that if it did this, it will face the consequences, and if it is not America’s work, this virus will still be contained.”
The IRGC commander did not provide any explanation about the evidence of a possible U.S. involvement in the coronavirus outbreak. One of the possibilities raised in some Western media is that this virus spread from a laboratory near the city of Wuhan, China.
So far, infection of several parliamentarians, senior government officials, and political and religious figures with the coronavirus has been confirmed, and some of them, including a member of the Expediency Discernment Council, an adviser to the Head of the Judiciary, a member of the eleventh parliament, and two relatives of one of the Shia sources of emulation in Qom have died from COVID-19.
According to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Health until Thursday noon, March 6 (15th of Esfand), 3,513 cases of new coronavirus infection have been identified in Iran and 107 people have died from it.
The high risk of coronavirus infection in closed and crowded places has worried the relatives of prisoners about their health. The Judiciary has reacted to these concerns in recent days by issuing several circulars, including regarding the granting of leave to prisoners, controlling and reducing the entry of new prisoners into prisons, and postponing the implementation of definitive sentences issued to the year 1399 (2020-2021).
However, apparently granting leave to prisoners does not include many political and security prisoners. One of these prisoners is Hengameh Shahidi. Her lawyer, Mostafa Torki Hamedani, requested on March 12 (12th of Esfand) in a message to the Head of the Judiciary to issue an order for the release of his client.
Concern of Families of Environmental Prisoners
The families of prisoners in the environmental case also complained on March 13 (14th of Esfand) in a letter to the Head of the Judiciary, while thanking the issuance of circulars related to preventing the spread of corona in prisons, that this decision has not included their imprisoned relatives.
According to the IRNA news agency, the letter addressed to Raisi states: “We humbly ask Your Excellency, does prudence and justice dictate that our loved ones, who have been in detention for a long time and even in solitary confinement, should be excluded in this dangerous and concerning situation!?”
The defendants in this case were arrested two years ago by the Sepah Intelligence Organization and tried on charges such as espionage and sentenced to long prison terms.
Niloufar Bayani, one of the defendants in this case who was sentenced to ten years in prison, revealed in recently published letters that she was subjected to torture and sexual threats during lengthy interrogations and forced to confess.
Kavous Seyed-Emami, one of those arrested in this case, died suspiciously in prison two weeks after his arrest, and the cause of his death was announced as “suicide.” The Ministry of Intelligence has declared the espionage charges against these defendants baseless.
Alarming Warnings About Corona Spread
With the expansion of COVID-19 outbreak in Iran, the National Corona Combat Headquarters, headed by the Minister of Health, has placed new measures to prevent its spread on the agenda.
Saeid Namaki announced on Thursday that all primary and higher education centers in Iran will be closed until the end of the current year. He warned citizens about observing health principles and the possibility of spread in crowded places and said, for example, that failure to observe health principles in gas stations could infect 8,000 people in one day.
Dr. Masoud Mardani, an infectious disease specialist and member of the National Influenza Committee, described the outlook for corona spread in the capital as much more alarming and told “Iran Online”: “The coronavirus is spreading rapidly and since one person can simultaneously infect 4 others when infected with this disease, we estimate that 30 to 40 percent of Tehran’s population will be infected with the coronavirus by the end of Esfand.”
Although official figures on the number of infected and victims of coronavirus in Iran have sharply increased in recent days, many citizens and some parliamentarians, such as Masoud Pezeshkian, believe that the actual number of corona cases is far beyond official figures.
Saeid Namaki said Wednesday night in this regard: “What we have today in managing corona in the country is much more organized than in previous days. If today the number of infected people has increased, it is because of the increase in the number of laboratories in the country which has increased in the speed of patient identification.”
One of the matters that has increased concern about the extent of corona spread in Iran is the identification of cases of infection among travelers who have traveled from Iran to about twenty other countries. Based on statistics from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, as of Thursday, 95,748 cases of corona infection have been reported worldwide, more than 80,400 of which are related to China. Iran and Italy have reported the most cases of corona infection after China and South Korea.
Source: DW
