Rumbled: The Ministry of Health Botched Nationwide Covid-19 Statistics

In a stunning reproach to the Iranian Ministry of Health, the website 31, which analyzes, reviews, and presents statistical data in the form of maps and graphs, has announced that because the Ministry manipulates its figures on the number of patients and victims of COVID-19, its figures will no longer be published on the platform.

From March 10 to April 26, 31 regularly updated its online count of the patients and victims of coronavirus based on the official statistics of the Ministry of Health. But from April 26, it stopped. In a report published on its pages, the website's staff stated that the reason for not updating was they had obtained evidence that the Ministry of Health had made up the figures.

Since mid-February, when the Ministry of Health officially announced the outbreak of coronavirus in Iran, the figures published in relation to coronavirus have continually been questioned. Many experts have denounced the Ministry of Health's reliance on positive coronavirus test results to state the number of cases as a systematic error – and a reason for the inaccurate statistics.

"From the beginning, we thought – and still do think – that from the time of breaking the news about coronavirus, the Ministry of Health's mistake in providing real statistics was based on a systematic error," said the staff of 31. "Based on specific guidelines and formulas within the organization, the statistics of patients were calculated based on a specific process – however wrong – and this was done in the same way throughout the country."

The staff of 31 cited their reason for publishing the reports previously was to track a behavioral pattern and understand the severity of the virus in different provinces. "The actual number of infected people may not be correct,” they said, “but the behavior pattern in provinces – in matters such as virus severity or the extent of penetration – is not necessarily incorrect."

From the March 23, the Ministry of Health announced that the number of COVID-19 cases would no longer be announced separately by provinces, and only the country-wide report would be presented. Kianoosh Jahanpour, director of the public relations at the Ministry of Health, gave various excuses for no longer breaking down the figure, but one was to deter people from traveling to less contaminated provinces.

In 15 to 20 provinces, the universities of medical sciences had been announcing daily counts of patients and victims of COVID-19, which 31 had published on a separate and aggregated basis.

The website staff said they were first alerted to the Ministry of Health’s massaging the figures on April 23. They wrote: "According to our findings, the number of patients in the whole country (cumulative, all provinces) according to the official report of the Ministry of Health did not match the statistics published by medical universities.

“The Ministry of Health announced the number of infected people in the whole country as 1,030 on that day, while the number of infected people in 18 provinces of Iran, according to the daily report of medical universities, was 1,017.

“In other words, theoretically, for 13 provinces, just 13 patients could have been counted on April 23. Among these 13 provinces, we can mention East Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Gilan, Alborz, Khorasan Razavi, Qom, Lorestan, Yazd, and Hamedan, where the situation of coronavirus is ‘red’ and the number of patients is high; for example, in East Azerbaijan, a day earlier on April 22, about 140 new cases were reported."

The team said they had initially assumed the discrepancy could be due to the time difference between the Ministry of Health and the universities over the course of a day, and waited for this numerical difference to be resolved in the following days.

Not only did this not happen, but they encountered an even more bizarre contradiction on April 27. On this day, the team wrote, "the daily number of patients in 20 provinces published by medical universities (1,011) was higher than the national total announced by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Health (991): 20 patients more.

“That is to say, in 11 provinces, including East Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Alborz, Khorasan Razavi and North Khorasan, Qazvin, Golestan, Gilan, Lorestan, Hamedan, and Yazd, the total number of patients has not increased, but we should probably reduce the number of daily patients in these provinces by 20 units to bring them in line with the Ministry of Health’s figures which is obviously not sustainable, and its provincial breakdown will not be statistically defensible."