President Slams U.S. for Spreading Virus “Fear”
IRAN NEWS NATIONAL DESK
TEHRAN — President Hassan Rohani on Wednesday accused the United States of trying to spread “fear” in Iran over a deadly outbreak of the novel Coronavirus.
“We shouldn’t let America mount a new virus on top of Coronavirus that is called… extreme fear,” Rohani told a weekly Cabinet meeting, a day after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of suppressing information about the outbreak.
The Americans “themselves are struggling with Coronavirus. Sixteen thousand people have died of influenza there but they don’t talk about their own (dead),” Rohani said.
On Tuesday, Pompeo accused the republic of concealing the true extent of the outbreak.
Rohani said Iran had been making progress in the fight against the virus as “we witness fewer (hospital) visits and progress in treatment”.
“If 100 people were hospitalized in the early days, seven to eight could have died, but this number has dropped very much today,” he said.
Rouhani also said the coronavirus testing kits developed by Iranian experts are undergoing final tests and will enter the mass-production stage in the near future.
All the initial tests on the package have proven to be “positive and credible,” Rouhani said yesterday, adding the equipment would undergo final examination over the next couple of days.
“Shortly, we will be able to make hundreds of thousands and even millions of these kits, and place them at the disposal of all of the country’s hospitals” he said, noting that the package would enable medics to easily diagnose new cases.
The president warned against either “understatement or overstatement” of the extent of the problem inside the country, and ruled out the possibility of any lockdowns.
“There will be no lockdowns of neighborhoods or cities. Only individual people showing the initial symptoms of the virus would be quarantined,” he said.
Rouhani referred to the National Taskforce for Fighting Coronavirus, which has been formed on his orders, as the only reliable entity for preventative directives and statistics.
The president said what demands even more attention than coronavirus itself was “the virus of fear, anxiety, ambivalence, and distrust among the people,” which has to be tackled properly as it could lead to other problems if not contained.
The president, meanwhile, praised the efforts made across the country over the past couple of weeks in terms of quarantining and treating patients, preventing the outbreak’s further spread, as well as attempts by security forces to confront those seeking to hoard supplies.
Overcoming the virus may take a few weeks, he noted, adding that the outbreak could not possibly be more dangerous than the flu, which the country had already tackled.
The president noted that there has been a decline in the number of people seeking medical help, and there has been progress in the treatment approaches that are being used.
The Iranian president also vowed to be transparent about the numbers of deaths and infections caused by the virus.
