The death toll on coronavirus in Iran raises to 3000

There have been over 3,000 deaths in Iran linked to the coronavirus, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) announced yesterday.

The deaths were recorded in 139 cities in all of Iran’s 31 provinces, but some of the biggest death tolls are as follows:

• Gilan, 500
• Qom, 500
• Isfahan 350
• Khorasan Razavi, 266
• Golestan, 254
• Mazandaran, 182
• Alborz, 120
• Fars, 86
• Khuzestan, 84
• Kurdistan, 81
• Markazi, 80
• Sistan and Baluchestan, 34
• Zanjan, 32

Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said:

“The oppressed people of Qom are now enduring a multifaceted calamity and pressure. While no government official even dares to visit the city, and clerics have escaped from Qom, dignified physicians, nurses and medical staff in the city are working under dire conditions. Patients and hospitals are denied minimum provisions. And now they must tolerate the insults, innuendos, threats, and arrests by the mullahs’ regime.”

The regime has been (belatedly and reluctantly) declaring a state of emergency across these provinces, but they are still trying to cover up the crisis as much as possible by either hiding the figures or presenting conflicting statistics.

For example, in Kashan province, the Governor said that 88 people died in the cities of Kashan, Aran, and Bidgol, and 1,056 people were infected. While the Deputy Health Minister said only 291 had died in Iran as a whole and that just 618 were infected in Kashan, Aran, and Bidgol.

However, the mullahs are admitting that the hospitals are too understaffed and underfunded to cope with the coronavirus outbreak.

Asadullah Abbasi, a parliamentary speaker, said that both Rudsar and Amlash hospitals have limited facilities, with Amlash not even having a doctor and Rudsar lacking an oxygen concentrator and a CT scanner, despite being the hospital allocated for the coronavirus.

Parliament Deputy Tayebeh Siavoshi went further, criticizing President Hassan Rouhani for not accepting that “the situation is very critical” and not taking action in February in order to boost turnout for the election.

While a member of Tehran’s committee to combat the coronavirus has said Iran is “at the peak of the outbreak” with infections and hospital admissions increasing daily, even though most hospitals have no beds and are forced to transfer patients to other hospitals and other cities.

He said:

“Those who need testing are several times more than those we have tested. We have stopped sending more people for tests… By the first week of April or early May, we estimate that 40% of the population will be infected.”

The unnamed individual said that there is a major shortage of personal protective equipment, like masks, gloves, gowns and protective shields, for the hospital staff, which is making it difficult to treat patients safely.

Four parliament deputies have even called for the reallocation of three separate funds, managed by the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards, in order to combat the coronavirus.