ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Millions of people have taken trips to mark the ancient Iranian new year celebration of Newroz, the head of the country’s Red Crescent Society said on Monday, despite state and international health organisation calls to stay home to curb the spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus.
“In the past days more than 8.5 million people using 2.8 million vehicles have left their homes. Among this number, we have identified 6,500 people with signs of coronavirus,” Red Crescent head Karim Hemmati told state-run news outlet IRNA.
The announcement of mass excursion for the holidays comes as figures provided by Iran’s health ministry put the country’s coronavirus death toll at 1,812, with over 23,000 cases confirmed nationwide.
“80 percent of those who died after contracting the virus were over 60 years of age or had at least one underlying health issue,” health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said. “The average age of those contracting the virus is 59 years and the average age of those who have died is 64.”
Over 8,300 people have recovered from the disease, Jahanpour added.
However, media outlets based outside Iran have estimated the death toll to be much higher than claimed by Tehran, and many Iranians have accused the authorities of not taking appropriate measures early enough.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei implied on Sunday that the US could be behind the novel coronavirus and labeled the American government as terrorist, while foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused the US of hampering efforts to tackle the virus with its sanctions. The US has repeatedly said that medical assistance is exempt from its crippling economic sanctions on Iran.
“Iranian people appreciate the growing global campaign of government & civil society leaders calling for lifting of illegal U.S. sanctions. U.S. is NOT listening, impeding global fight against #COVID19. The ONLY remedy: DEFY U.S. mass punishment,” Zarif tweeted.
But at least some amount of medical aid appears to have arrived in the country unimpeded, with Paris-based medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announcing on Sunday that it had sent a ”50-bed inflatable hospital and an emergency team” to the central Iranian city of Isfahan to treat the most critically ill COVID-19 patients.
“Iran is by far the hardest hit country in the region, and Isfahan the second worst-affected province in Iran,” said Julie Reversé, MSF’s representative in Iran. “We hope our assistance will relieve at least some of the pressure on the local health system.”
“We heard the Iranian authorities’ calls for more support to help them cope with the outbreak,” Reversé added. “As a medical organisation already present in the country, we offered to help with what we believe can provide the most value: treating the most severe cases.”
The first case of coronavirus in Iran was confirmed on February 18 in the religious city of Qom. The city’s medical university announced on Monday that around 40 doctors and 130 nurses have contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus since late February, according to IRNA. Two of the health professionals have died in their battle against the virus.
Over 340,000 cases have been confirmed worldwide with more than 14,700 dead, according to the Coronavirus Research Center at John Hopkins University.
