Iran's Civil Registration Organization: We will not publish winter 2019 death statistics

A spokesperson for the Civil Registration Organization says that at the request of the National Headquarters for Combating Coronavirus, the organization is not announcing the death toll for the winter of 2019.

On Tuesday, May 6, in an interview with ILNA news agency, Seifollah Aboutorabi emphasized that these statistics should normally be announced "by the end of April or May."

On May 1, Sharq newspaper reported that the Civil Registration Organization had not published winter death statistics and that the organization's website was also inactive.

Mohammad Bagherzadeh, a reporter for the Shargh newspaper, tweeted on May 24 that he had been asking the Civil Registration Organization for about two weeks to provide the newspaper with death statistics "separated by age and province," but officials from the organization said they "do not have the right to publish."

The issue of death statistics in the last three months of the year became prominent when Mohammad Javad Haghshenas, a member of the Tehran City Council, said that 13,000 people were buried in Behesht Zahra in March and April of this year.

He added that by comparing the number of people who died this year and the same period last year, we can obtain the number of people who died from Corona.

Nahid Khodakarami, a member of Tehran City Council, also said on April 17 that between 70 and over 100 patients who died of coronavirus in this city are buried every day.

According to the estimate announced by this city council member, between 4,000 and 5,600 suspected coronavirus patients have died in Tehran alone from March 2019 to April 17.

Source: Radio Farda