Iran death toll from new COV rises to 54
TEHRAN: Iran’s health minister raised on Sunday the nationwide death toll from the new coronavirus to 54 as the number of infected cases jumped overnight to 978 people.
Kianoush Jahanpour said new cases were confirmed in a number of cities, including Mashhad, which is home to Iran’s most important Shiite shrine that attracts pilgrims from across the region.
Calls by Iran’s civilian government to clerics to close such shrines to to the public have not been uniformly followed.
The new figures represent 11 more deaths than reported on Saturday and a whopping 385 new cases of infections. The new numbers, however, bring down the percentage of deaths to infections from 20% to around 5.5%.
Also on Sunday, Iran’s state broadcaster said all flights to the city of Rasht, the capital of nothern Gilan province, had been suspended. It gave no reasons why.
The area of Gilan has some of Iran’s highest number of infections after the capital, Tehran, and the holy city of Qom, the epicenter of the virus outbreak in the country.
The virus, which originated in central China, has infected at least seven government officials in Iran, including one of its vice presidents and a senior health ministry official.
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have allocated facilities across the country to help eradicate the new coronavirus, a Guards commander told a televised news conference on Sunday.
“We have set up centres across the country to help people to tackle the virus... we need national cooperation to tackle this crisis. People should follow our health officials’ advice,” said the commander, who was not named by Iran’s Press TV.
International experts are questioning the scale of the new coronavirus epidemic in Iran, where the official death toll is second only to China and risks creating a regional epicentre of contagion.
While Iran has acknowledged 54 deaths among confirmed infections nationwide - with a vicepresident and deputy health minister among those testing positive - unofficial tolls are much higher.
The report was immediately dismissed by Iran’s health ministry. The People’s Mujahedin, an exiled organisation that Tehran considers a terrorist group, claims that the epidemic has killed “more than 300,” while infecting up to 15,000 across the country.
Six epidemiologists based in Canada used a mathematical model to estimate that there have been more than 18,000 cases on Iranian soil.