One in five Iranians may have had virus, health official says CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
OMAN REPORTS 712 NEW CASES WHILE DEATH TOLL IN KUWAIT EXCEEDS 270
Nearly one in five Iranians may have been infected with the novel coronavirus since the country’s outbreak started in February, a health official said yesterday.
“About 15 million Iranians may have experienced being infected with this virus since the outbreak began,” said Ehsan Mostafavi, a member of the task force set up to combat Covid-19.
This meant the virus was “much less lethal than we or the world had anticipated”, the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.
The figure represents 18.75 per cent of the more than 80 million population of Iran, which yesterday announced another 74 deaths from the coronavirus.
Mostafavi said it was derived from serology tests to identify antibodies in patients who have recovered from the illness.
These differ from polymerise chain reaction (PCR) tests, which detect the presence of an antigen.
Iran says it has carried out more than one million PCR tests to “confirm” infections and report them so far.
74 deaths in 12 hours
Health ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said 74 new coronavirus fatalities in the past 12 hours had raised the overall death toll to 8,425.
Cases of infection rose by 2,095 over the same period to total 175,927, she added.
Lari replaced Kianoush Jahanpour as the health ministry’s spokesperson yesterday, according to a ministry statement.
1,721 new cases
Qatar has announced five more deaths from the novel coronavirus and 1,721 new cases, a record number of daily reported fatalities and infections.
This takes the country’s tally of deaths to 62, while the total number of infections has jumped to 71,817, according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Public Health on Tuesday.
The ministry revealed the full recovery of 1,634 Covid-19 patients, pushing to 47,569 the total recovered cases, while 24,248 are active cases still receiving medication at various medical facilities in the country.
Meanwhile, Oman has recorded 712 new cases of the novel coronavirus, bringing to 18,198 the country’s overall infections, the Omani news agency ONA reported Tuesday.
The ministry announced two more deaths taking the total of such fatalities to 83 while the number of recoveries reached 4,152.
Surge in infections
Kuwait has confirmed 630 new cases of the novel coronavirus over the past 24 hours, taking the country’s infection tally to 33,140. Four more deaths were announced, bringing the total fatalities in the country to 273.