Iran's Health Ministry says that fatalities from Covid-19 are on a downward curve but that the situation in Tehran and Qom is still critical. Dr. Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for the Health Ministry, warns that if the people of Qom do not wear masks they are bound to repeat the painful situation of February and March. But, while Dr. Lari is advising people to wear masks, the chairman of parliament’s Health Committee says that 40 to 50 percent of Iranians cannot even afford masks.
Meanwhile, Iranian News Agency quoted Hossein Ali Shahriari, the ranking member of the Iranian parliament's Health Committee, that the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has provided Iran with a billion dollars to help the country fight the epidemic. Ayatollah Sistani is an Iranian Shia spiritual leader with a huge following around the world, including in Iraq, where he is based. At the same time, the Dr. Lari says that, of the one billion dollars from Iran’s own National Development Fund that had been allocated to fight coronavirus, only 30 percent had been received so far.
There have also been rumors that Iranian-made medicines have not been effective in treating Covid-19 patients. Denying the rumors, Mohammad Reza Shanehsaz, head of Iran’s Food and Drug Administration, said that only one percent of the drugs used in treating Covid-19 patients were produced in Iran and that domestically-produced Remdesivir had yet to enter the market.
Shanehsaz added the claim that a Russian-made coronavirus vaccine can make a person immune for 73 days; but it must be injected four times a year, making it unwieldy to use. As a result, he said, a number of teams in Iran are working to develop a vaccine and they are using different methods.
The only way to stop coronavirus is to wear masks, said Dr. Hossein Ali Shahriari, chairman of parliament’s Health Committee, but he added that 40 to 50 percent of Iranians cannot afford them and that they must be given masks for free.
Dr. Shahriari also mentioned the fact that that the office of Grand Ayatollah Sistani had contributed a billion dollars to Iran to help the country fight coronavirus. Part of the funds had been used to buy medical equipment for some cities in the province of Sistan and Baluchistan.
In a letter to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on March 26, President Hassan Rouhani asked him to allow a billion dollars from the National Development Fund to be used to fight the epidemic. Khamenei waited 11 days before he agreed to the request. But on July 8, three months later, Health Minister Saeed Namaki reported that the government had received only 30 percent of this billion dollars.
In other words, a religious leader who lives in another country has contributed more funds to fight coronavirus in Iran that the Iranian government, the religious establishment and the National Development Fund combined.
For Shia Muslims, Eid al-Ghadir, which fell on August 7 to August 8, is a major occasion that celebrates the day when the Prophet Muhammad was said to have appointed his son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Taleb, the first Shia imam, as his successor. The public relations office of Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport reported that, with the start of the Eid al-Ghadir holidays, the number of flights out of the airport had increased significantly and exceeded 350 flights a day, carrying over 35,000 passengers.
Ebrahim Khodaei, president of the National Testing Organization, reported that this year’s nationwide university entrance exams will be held in prayer grounds and stadiums with enough open space. He said that each participant in these exams will be given a hygiene kit and that they would be seated two meters apart from each other. His only worry is that families may gather outside the makeshift testing places – putting people of multiple households in close proximity to each other.
More than 225,000 participants have meanwhile already taken exams to study for a master’s degree. Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raeesi claimed that 91 percent of 83,000 of them, who have answered a questionnaire, believe that health protocols had been properly observed during the exams.
Mohammad Qomi, head of Iran's Islamic Development Organization, claimed that holding upcoming ceremonies to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hossein, another Shia saint and a major fixture in Iran’s religious calendar, is a “people’s demand” because most Iranians want to mark the occasion and that calls to cancel these gatherings must not be presented as mainstream public sentiment.
In recent days the number of hospitalizations related to Covid-19 in Tehran province have slightly fallen. Bit Tehran itself and a number of other cities in the province are still in a state of high alert and, therefore, mourning processions are not allowed and mourning ceremonies can only be held in open spaces with proper air circulation, announced Anooshirvan Mohseni Bandpey, the governor of Tehran province.
Last week’s restrictions in Tehran province have been renewed for another week, Mohseni Bandpey said. He also reported that, as of August 6, 3,936 patients were hospitalized in the province and in the past 24 hours 54 Covid-19 patients have died.
But as usual these numbers, as announced by the governor, are doctored figures. According to daily figures registered by Tehran’s Behesht Zahra Cemetery, based on death certificates issued by doctors – a copy of which is regularly sent to the governor’s office every day – in the hospitals of just the city of Tehran, not even counting the province, more than 90 people died because of Covid-19 each day from August 4 to August 6. And to this number we must add the number of Covid-19 fatalities in other cities of Tehran province to arrive at the true figure – a number that Iranian officials hide on a regular basis for political reasons and to create a false sense of calm among people.
According to same figures, registered by Behesht Zahra Cemetery, between February 20 and August 6 and only in the city of Tehran, 9,040 patients died from coronavirus; 5,570 were men and 3,470 were women. The figures show that 6,587 of these fatalities were buried in Behesht Zahra and 2,453 were buried in other cemeteries in Tehran or in other provinces.
The Health Ministry spokeswoman, Dr. Lari, said that eight cities in the province of Azerbaijan are still in a state of red alert and two are at orange. But it is expected that in the coming weeks the province will stand down from red alert. According to her, the number of infections and hospitalizations are highest in the big cities of the province such as Tabriz, Maragheh, Mianeh, Sarab and Jolfa.
Mohammad Reza Ghadir, president of Qom University of Medical Sciences, reported that during the 24 hours before midday of August 7, eight Covid-19 patients in the province had died. According to him, during the same period, 101 new coronavirus cases were identified of whom 48 were hospitalized, bringing the total number of hospitalizations in Qom to 355, 70 of them in a critical condition.
Abdolrasoul Hemmati, vice president of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, reported on August 7 that in the previous 24 hours, 11 Covid-19 patients had died, bringing the total death toll in the province to 588 people. According to him, the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations has reached 904, of whom 107 are in ICU wards because they were in critical condition. He reported that since the outbreak of coronavirus 225,050 coronavirus tests had been conducted of which 35,519 were positive.
Hospitals and treatment centers in the city of Ardakan in Fars province have been filled to capacity and they have no empty beds, said Mohammad Reza Dashti, member of parliament from Ardakan.
The cities of Rasht, Astara, Langarud and Lahijan in Gilan are on red alert and the rest of the cities in the province are in an orange state of alert, reported Abtin Heydarzadeh, vice president of Gilan University of Medical Sciences, who said that, for all practical purposes, no city in the province is free from coronavirus.
In her daily briefing, the Health Ministry spokeswoman Dr. Lari said that the provinces of Mazandaran, Tehran, Golestan, North Khorasan, Ardebil, Isfahan, Alborz, Razavi Khorasan, Qom, Kerman, Semnan, East Azerbaijan, Markazi, Yazd and Gilan are in a red state of alert. The provinces of Fars, Ilam, Lorestan, Hormozgan, Zanjan, Qazvin, West Azerbaijan, Bushehr, Hamedan, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad are on an orange alert.
Dr. Sadat Lari also announced the official coronavirus statistics for the past 24 hours:
- New coronavirus cases: 5,084
- New hospitalizations: 1,145
- Total cases since the outbreak: 322,567
- Total coronavirus tests conducted in Iran: 2,637,575
- Total recovered from coronavirus: 279,724
- New fatalities: 156
- Total death toll since the outbreak: 18,132
This is part of IranWire's coronavirus chronology. Read the full chronology
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