Iran rejects reported Qom death toll of 50 from new virus
Bahrain confirms first coronavirus case
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Feb 24, (AP): A staggering 50 people have died in the Iranian city of Qom from the new coronavirus this month, a lawmaker was quoted as saying on Monday, even as the Health Ministry insisted only 12 deaths have been recorded nationwide.
The new death toll reported by the Qom representative, Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, is significantly higher than the 47 total cases of infections state TV had reported just hours earlier. Iran’s health ministry now says total infections have risen to 61, but a spokesman said deaths remained at 12.
Still, questions of transparency are being raised as the number of deaths compared to the number of confirmed infections from the virus is higher in Iran than in any other country, including China and South Korea, where the outbreak is far more widespread.
There are concerns that clusters of the new coronavirus in Iran, as well as in Italy and South Korea, could signal a serious new stage in its global spread.
Farahani, the lawmaker, said the 50 deaths in Qom date as far back as Feb 13. Iran first officially reported cases of the virus and its first deaths on Feb 19.
Farahani did not provide evidence to support his claims but said more than 250 people are quarantined in Qom, which is known for its Shiite seminaries that attract students from across Iran and other countries. Schools there have been shuttered.
Controlling
“I think the performance of the administration in controlling the virus has not been successful,” Farahani said, referring to the government of President Hassan Rouhani.
His comments represent the most public criticism levied yet against the government for its handling of the virus, which originated in China in December.
“None of the nurses have access to proper protective gear,” Farahani said, adding that some health care specialists had left the city. “So far, I have not seen any particular action to confront corona by the administration.
He spoke following a session in parliament in Tehran. His comments were published first by the semi-official ILNA and later by other news agencies in Iran.
While the lawmaker’s harsh criticism is rare in Iran, it reflects deep-seated public mistrust of the government, particularly in the days since the downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet in January that killed all 176 on board amid heightened tensions with the US Officials in Iran tried to conceal the cause of the crash before admitting Revolutionary Guard forces had shot the plane down, mistaking it as enemy target.
Health Ministry spokesman Iraj Harirchi insisted Monday the death toll from the virus remains at 12. He did, however, raise the number of confirmed cases of infections to 61, and added that some 900 other suspected cases are being tested.
“No one is qualified to discuss this sort of news at all,” Harirchi said, adding that lawmakers have no access to coronavirus statics and could be mixing figures on deaths related to other diseases like the flu with the new virus.
The virus, which causes the illness recently named COVID-19, has infected more than 79,000 people globally, and caused more than 2,600 deaths, most of them in China.
Ian Mackay, who studies viruses at Australia’s University of Queensland said the latest figures reported by the lawmaker mean that “Iran could become the hotspot for seeding countries that have travel with Iran ... a source outside of China.”
The outbreak of the virus in Iran comes as its economy buckles under
Workers wearing protective suits spray disinfectant as a precaution against the coronavirus at a market in Bupyeong, South Korea, Feb 24. South Korea reported another large jump in new virus cases Monday a day after the president called for ‘unprecedented, powerful’ steps to combat the outbreak that
is increasingly confounding attempts to stop the spread. (AP)
SEOUL, South Korea, Feb 24, (AP): The new virus took aim at a broadening swath of the globe Monday, with officials in Europe and the Middle East scrambling to limit the spread of an outbreak that showed signs of stabilizing at its Chinese epicenter but posed new threats far beyond.
In Italy, authorities set up roadblocks, called off soccer matches and shuttered sites including the famed La Scala opera house. In Iran, a report of dozens of deaths in a single city emerged as infections were reported to have spread for the first time to Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Afghanistan. Across the world, stock markets and futures dipped.
Worldwide, the number of people sickened by the coronavirus topped 79,000, and wherever it sprung up, officials rushed to try to contain it.
“The past few weeks has demonstrated just how quickly a new virus can spread around the world and cause widespread fear and disruption,” said the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Clusters of the virus continued to emerge, including a possible one in Qom, an Iranian city where the country’s semiofficial ILNA news agency cited a lawmaker in reporting a staggering 50 people had died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. The country’s Health Ministry rejected that, insisting the death toll remained at 12.
Authorities in Iran closed schools
pressure from US economic sanctions. The virus threatens to isolate Iran even further as neighboring countries closed their borders with Iran.
Authorities in Iraq and Afghanistan, which shut their borders with Iran, announced their first confirmed coronavirus across much of the country for a second day. Movie theaters and other venues were shuttered through at least Friday. And daily sanitizing of the metro in Tehran, which is used by some 3 million people, was begun.
China still has the vast majority of cases, but as it records lower levels of new infections, attention has shifted to new fronts in the outbreak. Chief among them is South Korea, where President Moon Jaein placed the country under a red alert, the highest level, allowing for “unprecedented, powerful steps” to stem the crisis.
Beyond expanding a delay to the start of the school year from the hardest-hit area of Daegu nationwide, though, it remains to be seen how far the government will go. A Chinese-style lockdown of Daegu – a city of 2.5 million people that is the country’s fourth largest – appeared unlikely, even as signs of the response to a broadening problem could be seen nearly everywhere in the nation.
More than 600 police officers in Daegu fanned out in search of hundreds of members of a church that has been identified as a source for hundreds of infections. The country’s National Assembly was temporarily closed Monday as workers sterilized its halls. At shops and food stalls in the capital of Seoul, a misty fog surrounded crews in protective suits who sprayed disinfectants.
cases on Monday. Kuwait and Bahrain also announced their first cases. In all four countries, the infected patients had links with Iran.
Travelers from Iran infected with the virus have also been confirmed in Canada, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
“The changes have been dramatic,” said Daegu resident Nah Young-jo, who described an increasingly empty city of few passersby and closed restaurants.
South Korean officials recommended that courts consider postponing trials of cases not deemed urgent, while Mayor Park Wonsoon of Seoul threatened tough penalties for those who defy a ban on rallies in major downtown areas. Work schedules for city employees in Seoul were staggered to reduce crowding on subways, where packed cars could become petri dishes if an infected passenger were aboard.
“If we fail to effectively prevent the spread of the virus into the local communities, there would be a large possibility (that the illness) spreads nationwide,” warned Kim Gang-lip, South Korea’s vice health minister.
Health workers said they planned to test every citizen in Daegu who showed cold-like symptoms for the coronavirus, estimating around 28,000 people would be targeted.
In Italy, where 219 people have tested positive for the virus and five have died, police manned checkpoints around a dozen quarantined northern towns as worries grew across the continent.
Austria temporarily halted rail traffic across its border with Italy. Slovenia and Croatia, popular getaways for Italians, were holding crisis meetings on the outbreak. Schools were closed, theater performances
The head of the World Health Organization expressed concerns Monday over the virus’ spread in Iran and Italy.
“It is an incredible time. Less than two months ago, the coronavirus was completely unknown to us,” WHO were canceled and even Carnival celebrations in Venice were called off.
It was a sign of how quickly circumstances could change in the widening COVID-19 scare. Italy had imposed more stringent measures than other European countries after the outbreak began, barring flights beginning Jan 31 to and from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.
Until last week, Italy had reported just three cases of infection.
“These rapid developments over the weekend have shown how quickly this situation can change,” the health commissioner for the European Union, Stella Kyriakides, said in Brussels. “We need to take this situation of course very seriously, but we must not give in to panic, and, even more importantly, to disinformation.”
China reported 409 new cases of the illness on Monday, raising the mainland’s total to 77,150. It also announced 150 new deaths for a 2,592 total.
Dr Liang Wannian, the leader of a team of Chinese experts working with WHO to study the outbreak, said more than 3,000 medical workers had been infected in the country, the majority of them in Wuhan. Liang said while the origins of the virus were still being studied, research suggested that bats may have been one of the hosts and that pangolins, a type of anteater, may have been an intermediate host.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters Monday. “The past few weeks has demonstrated just how quickly a new virus can spread around the world and cause widespread fear and disruption.”
The outbreak in Iran has centered mostly in the city of Qom, but spread rapidly over the past few days as Iranians went to the polls on Friday for parliamentary elections, with many voters wearing masks and stocking up on hand sanitizer.
Iranian health officials have not said whether health workers in Qom who first came in contact with infected people had taken precautionary measures in treating those who died of the virus. Iran also has not said how many people are in quarantine across the country overall.
To prevent the spread of the virus, schools across much of the country were closed for a second day. Public soccer matches and movie screenings have been suspended. Tehran’s metro, which is used by some 3 million people, and public buses in the capital are being sanitized daily.
Kuwait announced on Monday its first cases of the virus, saying that three travellers returning from the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iran, were confirmed infected with the coronavirus.
Iran, however, has not yet reported any confirmed cases of the virus in Mashhad, raising further questions about how the Iranian government is carrying out tests and quarantines.
Iran has confirmed cases so far in five cities, including the capital, Tehran. A local mayor in Tehran is among those infected and in quarantine.
Iraq said the virus was confirmed in an Iranian student in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Separately, a person in Afghanistan’s western province of Herat who had returned from Iran tested positive for the virus, the health ministry there confirmed.
Bahrain’s Health Ministry said an infected citizen who returned from Iran on Friday had transited through the world’s busiest international airport in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The ministry said the person is a school bus driver, and that students are being checked and related schools will be closed for two weeks.
Transferred
Bahrain’s Ministry of Health confirmed Monday the first case of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in after a Bahraini citizen arriving from Iran was suspected of contracting the virus, based on emerging symptoms.
The patient was transferred to Ebrahim Khalil Kanoo Medical Centre for immediate testing, treatment and isolation under the supervision of a specialized medical team, according to bahrain News Agency (BNA).
The ministry undertook further necessary medical measures to monitor all individuals who had been in contact with the patient and referred them to isolation accordingly.
The Ministry said it is taking further preventive measures to ensure the virus is contained, including monitoring individuals arriving from infected countries for a period of 14 days, in line with international standards set by the World Health Organization.
“The ministry calls upon all citizens and residents who are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, including fever, coughing and difficulty breathing, or those who have traveled to one of the countries infected with the disease or have interacted with a person traveling from any of those locations, or interacted with an infected patient, to isolate themselves, call 444, and follow the instructions given by the medical team, and avoid close contact with others,” the ministry said.
Armenia too has closed its border with Iran for two weeks and suspended air traffic between the two countries because of the new coronavirus. Azerbaijan temporarily closed two border checkpoints with Iran. Georgia too has restricted movement of individuals to and from Iran and halted direct flights.