The number of coronavirus victims in Iran is “3 to 4 times the official figure”

The number of new coronavirus cases in Iran has hit a record high again, but the official death toll has fallen slightly compared to previous days. An expert says the real number of victims is up to four times the official figure and the coronavirus management needs a major overhaul.

In recent weeks, the number of COVID-19 patients and victims in Iran has been increasing, with slight fluctuations, and criticism of the ineffectiveness of the policies and measures put in place to contain it has intensified.

Officials say citizens' failure to comply with health guidelines is the most important reason for the increase in COVID-19 cases and deaths. At the same time, many experts believe that public distrust of government officials and a lack of transparency in the strategies adopted to manage the coronavirus are contributing to this neglect.

Mehr News Agency reported on Sunday, November 24, quoting a member of the Supreme Council of the Medical System: "The lack of clear and accurate information on the current status of this disease in the country and merely declaring a yellow or red status in cities is a dangerous and irreparable mistake and one of the important reasons for the increase in the number of infected and deceased."

New record number of infected people

Hossein Qeshlaqi says that "weak management and the lack of proper use of common and well-known scientific methods" and the lack of sufficient coordination among the various branches of government are other factors behind the lack of control of the epidemic and the upward trend in the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in Iran.

On November 24, the Ministry of Health spokesman announced that 6,191 new cases of coronavirus have been identified in Iran in the past 24 hours, and 296 people infected with COVID-19 have lost their lives.

This is the highest number of cases identified in a single day since the official confirmation of the coronavirus outbreak. The record for the most cases has been broken again in the four days since the beginning of November.

According to Sima Sadat Lari, more than 2,000 newly identified patients have been hospitalized in the past 24 hours, and nearly 5,000 people are currently in "severe condition" of the disease.

The actual number of victims is up to four times that.

About two weeks ago, Iraj Harirchi, Deputy General of the Ministry of Health, said that the actual number of coronavirus victims in Iran is about twice as high as the official figure, because this figure only includes those who tested positive for coronavirus before death.

Masoud Mardani, a member of the scientific committee of the Coronavirus Response Headquarters, said last week that the number of victims was two and a half times the official figure, and Hossein Qeshlaqi now says the figure is three to four times that.

Huge differences and small number of tests

With this in mind, due to the low number of diagnostic tests in Iran, the number of infected people is not accurately known, and for this reason, the infection-death ratio also differs significantly from other countries.

Germany, with a population roughly the same as Iran, is conducting about four times as many coronavirus tests. In the past 24 hours, 11,176 new cases have been identified in Germany, and the death toll has reached 29.

Masoud Younesian, a faculty member at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, said on a television program last night that Iran's ranking in terms of the number of coronavirus tests conducted relative to the population is 113, which is much lower than the global average.

Mohammad Ismail Akbari, a senior advisor to the Minister of Health, said on Saturday: "The fact that we are detecting fewer cases [compared to some countries] is because we are conducting fewer tests, not because our situation is better. The sign of that is that our death toll has increased."

The need to change strategy

He says that Iran's strategy to combat COVID-19 has so far focused on treating the patient, which has resulted in medical staff being in poor conditions and large numbers of them leaving the service every day "either due to illness or death from its complications."

The senior advisor to the Minister of Health believes that this approach should be changed in such a way that testing is increased and the identification of infected people is pursued from villages to cities. He told Irnaplus: "The screening system should do this with the help of the health network system. Now the number of our forces is small and we have abandoned screening."

Severe budget deficits, severe economic recession, mismanagement, and corruption are among the most important reasons for the failure of Iranian government officials to combat the COVID-19 disease.

President Hassan Rouhani announced at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday that the Ministry of Health's request to allocate $150 million to purchase 30 million diagnostic kits has been approved so that, once they are procured, coronavirus testing can be carried out more quickly and widely.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) recently announced that it has provided more than 182,000 diagnostic kits to Iran to help combat the coronavirus pandemic.

Source: DW