Iran Is Among The Countries Worst Hit by the coronavirus pandemic. As of March 19, the country reported 1,248 deaths and 18,407 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Iran currently has the third-highest recorded infection rate after China and Italy, closely followed by Spain with 18,077 confirmed cases and 833 deaths. Unlike in most of the other 160 countries, the coronavirus spike in Iran has hit top levels of the government. Among those who tested positive for the virus are Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar and Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi. Masoumeh Ebtekar is President Hassan Rouhani’s deputy for women’s affairs and the highest-ranking woman in the government. More than nine other top officials, including members of parliament, senior clerics and military officers, have succumbed to the epidemic.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was forced to issue an edict in the second week of March prohibiting his countrymen from undertaking unnecessary travel. He warned that more than a million Iranians were at risk from the virus. In the third week of March, the government ordered temporary release of 85,000 prisoners in order to curtail spread of the virus in prisons. To mark the Persian New Year, Nowruz, on March 20, Khamenei pardoned 10,000 prisoners, many of them political detainees. But the government found it difficult to keep people from travelling and crowds from visiting the bazaars in view of Nowruz.
However, medical experts believe that many more Iranian lives could have been saved if easy access to life-saving drugs and good hospital care had been available. The draconian sanctions imposed on the country by the United States have severely hampered the government’s ability to tackle the epidemic effectively.
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