Filtered Statistics and Rouhani’s Insistence on Normalizing Affairs
The Ministry of Health’s statistics on coronavirus deaths are suspicious and do not match field data. Are these figures being presented with the intention of normalizing the situation and lifting restrictions? Rouhani says the government’s goal is to combat both coronavirus and unemployment.
The Ministry of Health announced in its latest figures that 94 people died from coronavirus in the past 24 hours. As a result, the total death toll has been two digits for the second consecutive day. However, the head of the health committee of Tehran’s city council says that 70 to 100 people die daily in the capital as a result of coronavirus infection.
Nahid Khodakarami stated that the difference in statistics might be due to different ways of recording the cause of death. The Shargh newspaper quotes her as saying: “First of all, the coronavirus test of many of the deceased is confirmed after burial, and the cause of death for some others is listed as respiratory distress.”
Ms. Khodakarami, who is also a member of the supreme council of the Medical Association, asked the Ministry of Health officials to tell people the truth as much as they can, otherwise the rumor market will heat up and citizens will become even more distrustful of officials: “…People have the right to know. They should know about the geographic spread of this virus and even be able to understand based on postal code information which neighborhoods are more affected. We are asking the Corona Headquarters to report the infection statistics to the people with details again so that public confidence in the situation does not deteriorate further.”
Mohammadjavad Haqshenas, head of the cultural commission of Tehran’s city council, previously complained about the lack of transparency in coronavirus statistics and tweeted: “It seems that now the mortality rate in Tehran and the statistics presented are not transparent and do not match large numbers.”
In contrast, Masoud Mardani, a member of the scientific board of the Corona Combat Headquarters, confidently reported a decrease in the rate of coronavirus infection and death, saying that not every death in Tehran should be attributed to coronavirus: “I am not someone who wants to confirm or deny the Ministry of Health’s statistics, but there is a fact and that is the process of declining disease, hospitalization, and deaths in Iran. I have seen many coronavirus patients daily since the beginning of the epidemic. Eighty percent of my patients were those infected before Nowruz, and today they came to me for a checkup. Of course, I had new cases, but most of my patients were those who came before Nowruz. The reality is that coronavirus in Iran is in a declining phase.”
Health or Livelihood
Hassan Rouhani says the government wants to fight both coronavirus and unemployment simultaneously. In justifying the resumption of business and the lifting of some travel restrictions, he refers to the people, saying that their most important concerns are health and livelihood. Rouhani said on Wednesday, April 16, in a cabinet session: “The food needed by the people has been provided during this period, and there has not been a time when people go to stores and face empty shelves and are told to go away and come back in two days, while many countries were struggling with that.”
He simultaneously claimed that in no province or city has there been a situation where a patient came to a hospital and was turned away: “…We have not found even one case in these three months where someone went to a hospital and was turned away or needed a bed or was not hospitalized due to financial poverty.”
Bahar newspaper, in an article about officials’ and the president’s insistence on normalizing affairs, writes that what governments and state media have been saying recently about stopping the upward trend of coronavirus “is not necessarily contrary to reality but is not the whole truth either!”
The article states that the downward trend in infections was due to strict implementation and several days of social distancing, and any return to normal life could cause serious disaster: “Justifications and excuses such as lack of sufficient financial resources or damage to the country’s industry and production and similar things are absolutely unacceptable, because the first duty of political power at any level is to protect the lives of citizens, and it cannot be accepted that some officials with a purely economic approach have forgotten the dangers of coronavirus spread and, through unprofessional oversimplification of some statistics, seek to return affairs to normal conditions and pre-coronavirus circumstances.”
The Ministry of Health has not yet confirmed that its statistics only consider cases with officially registered positive COVID-19 tests. Critics say that presenting non-transparent or declining statistics can reduce people’s sensitivity to observing social distancing regulations and health recommendations, and the scope of spread could become wider.
Source: DW
