Family Coronavirus Cases Rise as People Ignore Travel Bans and Other Restrictions

Health officials in Iran expressed anger at people who refuse to follow regulations designed to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Transmission within families continued to rise as many people defied the ban on traveling to and from five metropolitan areas and on marking religious holidays in the traditional manner over the recent three-day weekend. “The cost of treating families who have been infected by coronavirus because of people’s unnecessary travels should be paid by these people,” said Dr. Alireza Zali, director of the Tehran Coronavirus Taskforce.

“Nowhere in the world,” said health minister Saeed Namaki, “can you contain a contagion, an epidemic, by begging, imploring and entreating. You cannot fight this disease with this mindset. For the past eight months my colleagues and I have been begging people not to get sick. Every day between 13 and 15 of our nurses are infected and every month 450 nurses are taken out of service."

According to Namaki, a survey shows that 86 percent of the population support taking action against lawbreakers. “Why should we not take action against 10 or 12 percent of the people and let them endanger society?” he said.

At a Tehran City Council meeting, the council president Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani called for a two-week total shutdown of the Tehran metropolitan area. Otherwise, he said, “we might not be able to handle the third wave. Daily fatalities have risen to around 300 and in Tehran the number of deaths is between 100 and 150” each day, he said. “We must come up with more targeted actions because it appears that this model of operation and this kind of planning is not working.”

He also pointed out that high prices have deprived people of proper nutrition, which was also undermining people’s immune systems and resistance to disease.

Provinces Round-up

As of October 18, in Tehran 14,931 people have lost their lives to coronavirus, according to Nahid Khoda Karami, head of Tehran City Council’s Health Committee. She said that 50 percent of all coronavirus fatalities in Iran occur in Tehran. The worst day was October 3, when 136 people died.

Closures and traffic restrictions are still in place In many Iranian provinces, and in several provinces, including Hamedan, Qom, Isfahan, Zanjan, Fars and Kerman, restrictions have been extended from one week to 10 days.

Houshang Bazvand, the governor of Kermanshah province, warned that the situation was reaching a crisis level. “Currently 680 coronavirus patients are hospitalized across the province and if this number reaches 800, we will have nowhere else for them to stay but in the hallways of the hospitals,” he said.

In the 24-hour-period spanning October 17 and October 18, 14 more Covid-19 patients died in Kermanshah, bringing the total death toll in the province to 750.

Similarly, in Alborz province, over the last 24 hours 14 Covid-19 patients died, with the total death toll in the province standing at 1,427 as of October 18, reported Dr. Mohammad Fathi, president of Alborz University of Medical Sciences. “From yesterday to today, 112 patients with coronavirus symptoms have been hospitalized at the treatment centers in the province,” he said. “Currently 790 suspected or confirmed coronavirus cases are hospitalized,” he said.

The situation of the epidemic in Ilam province has gone beyond the red state of alert and if it continues in the same manner the province will face shortages of drugs, beds and oxygen, warned Dr. Abbas Gheisoori, vice president of Ilam University of Medical Sciences. “Currently 200 coronavirus patients are hospitalized in the province and most medical resources are allocated to Covid-19 patients, but other patients are in need of medical services as well.”

In her daily briefing for October 18, the health ministry spokeswoman Dr. Sima Sadat Lari announced the official coronavirus statistics for the last 24 hours:

In a new breakdown of the statistics, Dr. Lari reported that since the outbreak of coronavirus up to October 11, 14,982 of the people who had died after contracting coronavirus had been suffering from underlying diseases such as pulmonary, heart, liver and kidney diseases and diabetes.

Dr. Lari also reported that out of the 31 Iranian provinces, currently 30 provinces are still in a high state of alert.

This is part of IranWire's coronavirus chronology. Read the full chronology