Coronavirus in Iran breaks record again: 22,000 more infected; mutated virus dominates

Following the significant increase in official coronavirus statistics in Iran, the spokesperson for the National Coronavirus Headquarters announced the identification of approximately 12,000 patients infected with this strain of the virus, referring to the dominance of the mutated virus in the country.

According to the Young Journalists Club, Alireza Raisi also said on Thursday, April 9, that based on the latest instructions from the Corona Headquarters, direct and indirect flights to 21 countries will be prohibited.

He did not mention all these countries by name, only saying that flights from Latin American and South African regions are banned from entering the country.

The reason for the ban on flights from these countries is the possibility of transmission of a specific mutated virus from these areas.

However, according to Mr. Raisi, no cases of people being infected with the coronavirus originating in Brazil or South Africa have been reported in the country so far.

In the latest official statistics, the spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Health announced on Thursday that 185 new patients had died and more than 22,500 new cases of coronavirus had been identified in the past 24 hours.

Thus, the official number of Covid-19 patients in Iran reached 2 million 6,934 and the total number of deaths reached 63,884.

Iranian Ministry of Health officials provide the media with daily statistics on the number of infections and deaths from the coronavirus without providing disaggregated statistics, while there are serious doubts about the accuracy of these statistics, and the Iranian Medical System Organization has estimated the number of victims to be three to four times the official figure.

According to this report, the status of 257 counties has been declared red and 129 counties orange, and based on the approvals of the Coronavirus Response Headquarters, travel "from" and "to" these areas has been prohibited.

As the number of coronavirus patients in the capital city breaks records, some officials have warned that hospital beds in Tehran will fill up in the coming days.

Nader Tavakoli, deputy head of the coronavirus task force in Tehran, announced on Thursday that the number of hospital beds in Tehran province that can be made available to coronavirus patients is a maximum of 10,000.

But, according to him, more than half of this capacity has been filled in recent days.

Meanwhile, Farshad Allameh, vice president of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, said that elective surgeries have been stopped in public and private hospitals under the university's care, and new beds and wards have been allocated to coronavirus patients.

After the end of the Nowruz holiday in the country, the number of people infected with the coronavirus has been breaking its previous record for several consecutive days.

In March 2020, in the days leading up to Nowruz, despite warnings from experts, government officials did not create new obstacles to prevent citizens from traveling during Nowruz, and only pleaded and pleaded, warning that the coronavirus situation after the Nowruz holidays would depend on people's behavior.

The Deputy Minister of Health predicted on Wednesday that the situation in Iran is so critical that it is not unlikely that we will see 600 victims a day.

Source: Radio Farda