Iran Air announced on Wednesday that its flights to Vienna will begin again from Tehran on August 15, IRNA reported.

With the COVID-19 outbreak, Iran Air canceled many flights including to Austria and vice versa for several months.

Following removal of restrictions, Iran Air announced its flight schedule to Vienna on August 15, from Imam Khomeini International Airport.

Also, the Iranian Embassy in Spain announced on Monday that Iran Air will resume flights between Tehran and Madrid in September.

The airline will operate its first flight of Tehran-Madrid route in September after a five-month hiatus, the embassy announced, saying that the license of airline’s normal and weekly flights on the Tehran-Madrid-Tehran route has been issued by the Spanish aviation authorities.

Based on the coordination between Iranian and Spanish officials, four special flights have been conducted from Madrid to Tehran to bring home the Iranians stranded in Spain.

A senior Health Ministry official in Tehran, Mohsen Farhadi told IRNA that the new restrictions target four types of businesses and are aimed at curbing the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Farhadi said wedding and conference halls are banned from holding ceremonies and gatherings, and gyms where sports such as wrestling, judo, taekwondo, and the like, where high physical contact between athletes is practiced, must shut down.

He added that coffee shops and tea houses, as well as aqua parks, amusement parks, and zoos will remain closed during this period.

Iran has been battling a resurgence of COVID-19, with official figures showing a rise in both new infections and deaths since a two-month low in May.

The Health Ministry on Friday raised the overall virus toll to more than 13,790 deaths, with 183 new fatalities, and over 269,400 confirmed cases.

Iran has refrained from imposing a full lockdown but closed schools and canceled public gatherings. It banned travel between provinces in March but lifted the order the following month.

The rising toll has prompted authorities to make masks mandatory in enclosed public spaces and allow worst-hit provinces to reimpose restrictions.

AFP contributed to this story.

The research by the University of Hong Kong is some of the first to specifically investigate whether masks can stop symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers from infecting others.

Led by Professor Yuen Kwok-yung, one of the world’s top coronavirus experts, the team placed hamsters that were artificially infected with the disease next to healthy animals.

Surgical masks were placed between the two cages with airflow traveling from the infected animals to the healthy ones.

The researchers found non-contact transmission of the virus could be reduced by more than 60 percent when the masks were used.

Two thirds of the healthy hamsters were infected within a week if no masks were applied.

The infection rate plunged to just over 15 percent when surgical masks were put on the cage of the infected animals and by about 35 percent when placed on the cage with the healthy hamsters.

Those that did become infected were also found to have less of the virus within their bodies than those infected without a mask.

“It’s very clear that the effect of masking the infected, especially when they are asymptomatic — or symptomatic — it’s much more important than anything else,” Yuen told reporters.

“It also explained why universal masking is important because we now have known that a large number of those infected have no symptom.”

Yuen was one of the microbiologists who discovered the SARS virus — a predecessor of the current coronavirus — when it emerged in 2003, killing some 300 people in Hong Kong.

Armed with knowledge from that fight, he advised Hong Kongers early in the current pandemic to adopt universal masking, something embraced by the city’s residents.

At the time the World Health Organisation and many other foreign health authorities dismissed using masks widely among the public, saying they should instead go to frontline medical workers.

Four months after its first COVID-19 case was detected, Hong Kong has largely managed to contain the disease with just over 1,000 infections and four deaths.

Experts have credited widespread mask use as well as efficient testing, tracing and treatment in the city of 7.5 million for the relatively low numbers.

Addressing the National Headquarters for Managing and Fighting the Coronavirus in Tehran, Rouhani said that Eid al-Fitr prayers, which mark the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, will be held in religious centers across the country, Press TV reported.

He added, however, that the prayers will only take place in local religious centers as opposed to major prayer grounds where worshippers usually convene in each city to mark the event.

The president said that Quds Day will also be commemorated in “white” regions where the coronavirus has not deemed a threat.

He added that Quds Day will be organized without its usual annual rallies and will instead be held within the perimeters of Friday prayers, with health protocols set by health ministry.

Rouhani exempted the capital Tehran from the plan, where a drive-in march will be staged to honor the Quds Day event.

“It will be a symbolic measure using vehicles and it will be organized by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC),” he said.

As a legacy of the late founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, Quds Day has been designated on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan to mark worldwide Muslim solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

The event was commemorated every year with major rallies across Iran and beyond.