Iran Health Ministry: Whole Country in ‘Red’ Zone
Iran Health Ministry: Whole Country in ‘Red’ Zone
Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi said that the whole country is now classified as “red” – the highest category in the country’s virus risk scaling.

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi said that the whole country is now classified as “red” – the highest category in the country’s virus risk scaling – as Iran reported more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases from Thurday to Friday.

“The color classification doesn’t make sense anymore. We no longer have orange and yellow, the whole country is red,” Harirchi said in a televised interview in the northwestern city of Tabriz on Thursday.

Iran has been divided up into white, orange/yellow and red regions based on the number of infections and deaths.

Harirchi warned that if this trend continues, the death toll from the coronavirus will reach 45,000 in Iran – the worst-hit country from the virus in West Asia, according to IRNA.

He said that the number of hospitalizations in Tabriz, for instance, has reached 160 from under 40 in a day and the hospitalizations have increased from 10 to 160 in the central city of Qom.

On Tuesday, Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raeisi said that the number of people testing positive for the novel coronavirus doubled in the capital Tehran just in one week.

Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said that the number of new positive cases in the country rose by 3,049, to 416,198, from Thursday to Friday.

He noted that 1,593 of the newly-infected people have been hospitalized.

Among those undergoing treatment in medical centers at present, 3,869 coronavirus patients are in critical condition due to more severe infections, Lari noted.

At least 355,505 patients have recovered from the coronavirus infection so far, or have been discharged from hospitals across Iran, the spokeswoman said.

The ministry’s spokeswoman also put the death toll from the virus at 23,952 following the death of 144 patients from Thursday to Friday.

She said that 3,691,399 coronavirus diagnostic tests have been carried out in Iran so far.

Iran has been trying to contain the spread of the virus by enforcing social distancing measures and making face masks mandatory in public places since the outbreak of the virus in the country in February.

But, recent holidays in the country, during which many people traveled to other cities, led to the increase of new cases in the country.

  • source : Iran Daily