Fines for Violators Not Wearing Face Masks

reporter 1222 — Sun, 11 Oct 2020 05:24:13 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani introduced fines for violators as the country has made it mandatory to wear face masks in the capital Tehran in an attempt to contain the resurgence of the coronavirus.

Speaking during a meeting of National Headquarters for Managing and Fighting the Coronavirus on Saturday, Rouhani said Tehran residents would be fined 500,000 riyals ($1.66) for not wearing face coverings and would be given two weeks to pay the amount.

A person, who is infected with the coronavirus, is also obliged to inform his family and workplace and quarantine himself for two weeks, otherwise he would be fined 2,000,000 riyals ($6.67), he added.

If taxi drivers do not use masks, they risk a fine of 1,000,000 riyals ($3.33), Rouhnai noted.

He further said that if taxi drivers pick up passengers without face coverings, they will be fined 200,000 ($0.66) for each passenger.

The businesses that do not abide by the compulsory face mask rule would first be handed a notice, and if they continue the violation, they will be fined 3,000,000 riyals ($10) and later 10,000,000 ($33.4) or closed finally, the president added.

The police, the Basij force and health inspectors will have powers to impose the fines, and offenders will have two weeks to make payment into a Health Ministry account, Rouhani said.

The president also stressed that the new measures will only be enforced in Tehran and may be extended to other provinces if necessary.

Iran has been contending with the deadliest pandemic the world has seen in many decades amid illegal US sanctions, which have seriously hampered efforts to stem the outbreak.

After declining for weeks, the deaths and infections have been on the rise in Iran since the beginning of September.

New figures

Iran’s daily death toll from the novel coronavirus hit a record high of 239 on Wednesday. Daily infections reached a new high of 4,392 the following day.

The virus has killed more than 28,000 people and infected nearly 500,000 in Iran, according to Health Ministry figures.

Tehran authorities shut most public spaces and cancelled public events for a week last Saturday in a bid to contain the spread of the virus. Those restrictions have been extended until Friday.

According to the Health Ministry, Iran registered 3,875 new coronavirus cases from Friday to Saturday, with the total number of identified cases in the worst-hit country in the West Asia rising to 496,253.

Among those undergoing treatment in medical centers at present, 4,439 coronavirus patients have critical health conditions, ministry’s spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on Saturday.

She added that 195 patients died from Friday to Saturday, bringing the total number of fatalities to 28,293.

IRNA, Press TV and Reuters contributed to this story.

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Wearing mask could prevent COVID-19 second waves: Study

reporter 1222 — Wed, 10 Jun 2020 06:31:27 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – Wearing mask could push COVID-19 transmission down to controllable levels for national epidemics and could prevent further waves of the pandemic disease when combined with lockdowns, according to a UK study published Wednesday.

The research, led by scientists at Britain’s Cambridge and Greenwich Universities, suggests lockdowns alone will not stop the resurgence of the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, but that even homemade masks can dramatically reduce transmission rates if enough people wear them in public, Reuters reported.

“Our analyses support the immediate and universal adoption of facemasks by the public,” said Richard Stutt, who co-led the study at Cambridge.

He said the findings showed that if widespread mask use were combined with social distancing and some lockdown measures, this could be “an acceptable way of managing the pandemic and re-opening economic activity” long before the development and public availability of an effective vaccine against COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.

The study’s findings were published in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society A” scientific journal.

The World Health Organization updated its guidance on Friday to recommend that governments ask everyone to wear fabric face masks in public areas where there is a risk to reduce the spread of the disease.

In this study, researchers linked the dynamics of the spread between people with population-level models to assess the effect on the disease’s reproduction rate, or R-value, of different scenarios of mask adoption combined with periods of lockdown.

The R-value measures the average number of people that one infected person will pass the disease on to. An R-value above one can lead to exponential growth.

The study found that if people wear masks whenever they are in public it is twice as effective at reducing the R-value than if masks are only worn after symptoms appear.

In all scenarios the study looked at, routine facemask use by 50 percent or more of the population reduced COVID-19 spread to an R of less than 1.0, flattening future disease waves and allowing for less stringent lockdowns.

“We have little to lose from the widespread adoption of facemasks, but the gains could be significant,” said Renata Retkute, who co-led the study.

The post Wearing mask could prevent COVID-19 second waves: Study appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Wearing mask Archives - Iran News Daily

Fines for Violators Not Wearing Face Masks

Wearing mask could prevent COVID-19 second waves: Study