Forecast of the Corona trend in Iran: We will be dealing with it until early summer

Officials in Iran are not giving people consistent information about the spread of the coronavirus. One day they say the number of infected people is decreasing, the next day they say it will continue to spread for months to come. But what is increasing every day is the death toll.

Kianoush Jahanpour, spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Health, announced the following statistics on Monday, March 30, regarding the latest confirmed cases of coronavirus in Iran and deaths from it:

From noon on Sunday, March 29, to today, March 30, and "based on definitive diagnostic criteria, 3,186 new patients with COVID-19 were identified in the country." According to this statistic, the total number of identified patients has reached 41,495, and the number of victims has also reached 117 in the past 24 hours, and the total number of those who have died has reached 2,757.

According to the Ministry of Health spokesperson, 3,511 patients are in severe condition and as of Monday afternoon, more than 63 million people have participated in coronavirus screening.

What do the predictions say?

The reality is that it is not easy to predict the spread or decline of the disease. Currently, in many countries, including Germany, the results of a measure can only be announced by estimating and analyzing the results of the implementation of regulations after about two weeks, which can also change over a longer period of time.

In Iran, given that the government has long been unable to implement any regulations that would lead to control of this disease, it is much more difficult to have a correct assessment and predict the course of this disease.

In this regard, Parviz Karami, spokesperson and head of the Communication and Information Center of the Presidential Vice President for Science and Technology, has presented five scenarios in his Instagram post regarding the spread of the coronavirus until June. These five scenarios are based on the level of government intervention and control.

The first scenario suggests that if the government does nothing, the death toll will reach tens of thousands. Other scenarios look at the difference in death rates associated with minimal government intervention through education and information or moderate government intervention “including social distancing, closures of sporting, cultural and religious events and schools, universities, and restrictions on movement and movement.”

The final scenario addresses "high-level and intense government intervention, including the measures of the fourth scenario and more stringent interventions such as preventing intra- and extra-urban movements, quarantining cities, and isolating suspected individuals," which could sharply reduce the growth of deaths to about 7,700.

The Fars News Agency continued the same story by writing that the analysis predicts that Iran will be affected by the virus until early summer, and that "the extent of government intervention and restrictions will be highly effective in reducing the mortality rate."

The government is unable to adopt an effective policy.

In many countries, the government has actively intervened in all areas, from economic aid to imposing strict regulations to control the disease. In Iran, the coronavirus initially became a partisan issue, with some clerics widely opposing the quarantine of religious places and the closure of Friday prayers.

But the government is also criticized for being incompetent, inefficient, and weak. At the same time, financial resources are mainly in the hands of the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards, and the government entered 2020 with a huge budget deficit. For this reason, there is no public trust in what President Hassan Rouhani tells the media. On Sunday, April 1, at a meeting of the National Headquarters for Managing and Countering Corona, he said, "In some provinces, we have passed the peak and are on the downward slope, but in some provinces we still cannot speak with confidence." He also referred to the statements of some experts who believe that we should wait until the end of the Nowruz holidays to make a definitive judgment so that it becomes clear what the situation of the Corona outbreak in Iran is.

In other words, not all experts believe that the peak of the coronavirus outbreak has passed in some provinces and consider it premature to judge this. This doubt is justified given that measures restricting movement and social distancing, which could lead to a slowdown in the spread of COVID-19, have only just begun in Iran.

Iraj Harirchi, Deputy Minister of Health, also said in a press conference via video conference almost simultaneously with Rouhani: "The spread of coronavirus has decreased in 13 provinces, and in many villages and small towns, which have a total population of 32 million, there have been fewer than 5 cases of infection."

The entry of military forces into the campaign to combat Corona and mass production of kits

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries are using the military as an auxiliary force for the medical and health systems. The production lines of many factories have changed, for example, instead of alcoholic beverages, they are producing industrial alcohol.

On Monday, April 1, IRNA news agency quoted Mohammad Azizi Delshad, head of the Industrial Research Department of the Armed Forces General Staff, as saying that the country is ready to mass produce coronavirus diagnostic kits. He said about the kit's specifications that it can "diagnose the disease with high accuracy and very well" within three hours and can identify all common genomes in the world.

According to him, "This kit is no less than similar models in the world, and in some cases, advantages have been seen in the accuracy and precision of this kit."

Source: DW