Health Minister: If people fail, coronavirus victims will reach four figures

Iran's health minister has warned that the country is facing a coronavirus "virus bomb" and that the death toll from the virus in Iran could reach four figures if new restrictions are not taken seriously. He spoke of an "abyss" that will be difficult to escape from.

Iranian Health Minister Saeed Deh Namaki referred to a “strange and sad” letter he wrote to Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, and President Hassan Rouhani, in a meeting with officials at Isfahan University of Medical Sciences on Tuesday, November 17. It is this letter that allegedly led Ayatollah Khamenei to assign “the authority to set restrictions” to the Ministry of Health and to order that “whatever this ministry says must be implemented.”

Now, 150 cities in Iran are set to be closed for two weeks starting Saturday (December 1). The Health Minister named next Saturday as “one of the most crucial dates for managing the coronavirus,” and said, “If people back down, we will lose the game and reach four-digit (daily) deaths.” Saeed Dehnamaki added, “Four-digit deaths mean that we will reach an abyss that will be difficult to get out of, just as we were facing a package of problems when deaths reached three digits.”

The Ministry of Health had previously called for a two-week nationwide lockdown to ease the burden on hospital staff and slow the spread of the coronavirus. A decision was scheduled to be made at a meeting on Saturday, November 14, but the meeting rejected the idea. Apparently, the regime’s leaders decided to implement the lockdown plan at short notice, given the fact that the number of daily victims is setting a new record in Iran.

The government's main problem in implementing this plan is the lack of financial resources to run the society. The Minister of Health also referred to "the worst days of lack of resources in the Central Bank and heavy hardships" and said that he knows that "no disaster for a country's economy is worse than a shutdown and a prolonged period of the epidemic," but "a shutdown is better than a business being infected, falling ill for a month, and God forbid losing its life due to the disease."

What happened to that one billion euros?

In his remarks today, the Minister of Health also referred to Khamenei's order to allocate one billion euros to combat the coronavirus, saying that it has been decided that this money "will be made available to the Ministry of Health, of which we had received 30 percent a month ago, and we received the rest in several stages in the last few days."

The Ministry of Health was promised that this one billion (Euros) would be allocated to fight the coronavirus in April of this year. But until October of this year, it was not clear what happened to the rest of the money, except for a small portion.

On Tuesday, November 17, Tasnim News Agency wrote in a report titled "What happened to the one billion euros allocated to combat the coronavirus?!" that the country faced a serious crisis with the outbreak of the coronavirus, including medical costs and the closure of businesses, "to the point that the government could no longer afford the heavy costs of the coronavirus from the country's budget resources."

In the midst of this, President Hassan Rouhani wrote a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei requesting one billion euros from the National Development Fund. Ayatollah Khamenei agreed to the request to withdraw the money on April 8, 2018, seven months ago.

Tasnim news agency wrote that a month later (in May) the allocation of one billion euros for the coronavirus was announced, and Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, head of the Planning and Budget Organization, "announced the deposit of the first part of the rial equivalent of one billion euros in aid from the National Development Fund resources to combat and manage the effects of the coronavirus outbreak in the country by the Central Bank into the treasury account."

But on May 23, Saeed Namaki wrote on his Twitter account, "Thanks to God and with the dedication of my colleagues, we have surpassed the most powerful countries in the fight against Corona. However, in financial distress and compared to those who have spent billions of dollars, my colleagues are asking in a bad mood, what happened to at least one billion euros of the National Development Fund?"

Last month, the Minister of Health complained again: "I have not received anything but a small portion of the one billion euros that the leadership agreed to for months. I don't know what more important task they allocated this budget for?"

Tasnim wrote that these remarks show that “there is no transparency in the spending and how the one billion euros were received.” The news agency referred to a roundtable discussion on the radio program “Media Justice with a Demanding and Transparency Approach” with the participation of Kianoush Jahanpour, Director General of Public Relations at the Ministry of Health, Fatemeh Mohammad Beigi, First Secretary of the Parliament’s Health Commission, Mehdi Esfandiar, and two health experts, which was broadcast on Radio Javan “to clarify the issue of the currency allocated from the National Development Fund.”

The host asks, "One billion euros from the National Development Fund was allocated to the Ministry of Health to manage the coronavirus; what do you think happened to the budget and where was it spent?" One of the experts responds: "Unfortunately, the lack of transparency is a constant sad story of our health system, which also exists in other economic systems; where this amount was spent and why the Minister of Health says that this budget did not reach him is a matter of reflection and surprise, and it is necessary to conduct a thorough investigation in this regard."

Another result of the "strange and sad" letter from the Minister of Health to Khamenei was that, after months, the remaining one billion was finally given to the ministry.

We are facing a virus bomb.

According to the Minister of Health, Iranian citizens are facing a “virus bomb” and “negligence” at this point, whether by officials or by the public, “means firing the last straw in disease management.” He spoke of a virus bomb whose “power of transmission has increased 10-fold.”

According to official statistics, 13,352 new COVID-19 patients were identified in Iran within 24 hours, bringing the total number of COVID-19 patients in the country to 788,473.

During the same period, 482 patients lost their lives, bringing the total number of victims of this disease in Iran to 42,461.

According to the Ministry of Health spokesman, the provinces of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, East Azerbaijan, South Khorasan, Semnan, Qazvin, Lorestan, Ardabil, Khuzestan, Kermanshah, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad, Gilan, Bushehr, Zanjan, Ilam, Khorasan Razavi, Mazandaran, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Alborz, West Azerbaijan, Markazi, Kerman, North Khorasan, Hamedan, Yazd, and Kurdistan are in red status.

The provinces of Hormozgan, Fars, Golestan, and Sistan and Baluchestan are also in orange and yellow status.

How is the plan implemented?

The Ministry of Health's plan includes various levels, from restricting movement during certain hours of the day to monitoring the mobile phones of those infected with the coronavirus.

According to the Minister of Health, in the new plan, cities are divided into three groups; first, yellow cities, where there are four PCR-positive patients (active virus in the body) hospitalized for every 100,000 people, orange areas are those with six PCR-positive patients per day for every 100,000 people, and finally, red cities, where there are 10 positive patients per 100,000 people. Health Ministry officials say that in such a city, 1,500 hospital beds and 300 emergency (ICU) beds are needed for every one million people.

Starting from December 1, movement in red cities will be prohibited from 9:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. A system has also been set up to "track people in quarantine," and those who do not comply with the regulations will be fined; "In the first stage, a positive person who moves around the community will be fined 200,000 tomans, and in the next stage, they will be placed in mandatory quarantine."

The second quarantine group includes high-risk individuals; people over 65 or those with underlying illnesses. This group constitutes a population of 11.7 million people in Iran, and according to Saeed Dehnamaki, 88 percent of the fatalities are in this group.

Saeed Dehnamaki said that now 51 percent of the factors causing the disease are gatherings. He emphasized that “we cannot close down cities and have 60 people gather in one house during these long winter nights.” He spoke of forming groups in neighborhoods to raise awareness.

Monitoring the mobile phones of "coronavirus patients" is also among the measures foreseen by the Corona Response Headquarters, an issue that has also fueled security concerns.

Source: DW