Tehran Covid Cases on the Rise

EghtesadOnline: The number of patients hospitalized due to Covid-19 is slowly rising in the capital of Tehran, with health officials warning of a return of restrictions if hospitalizations continue to increase.

News ID: ۷۸۵۸۷۷

01 February 2021

“If admissions to hospitals keep rising, warnings should be issued to change Tehran’s color code,” the head of the city’s coronavirus taskforce, Alireza Zali, was quoted as saying by ISNA late Saturday.

If Tehran’s pandemic status is moved from yellow to orange, many businesses would have to close and travel to and from the region would be banned again.

Pointing to the 10-day gap between a rise in hospitalizations and hospitals running out of capacity during the third wave of the disease, Zali said, “This will happen much faster this time around, if there’s a new spike in Tehran.”

Health Minister Saeed Namaki also expressed concern on Sunday about the resurgence of the disease, noting that a fourth wave would be “more intense” and “more contagious”.

After the third wave of cases retreated, the government drastically eased restrictive measures and public adherence to health protocols sharply declined.

Iran will receive its first shipment of Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V by the end of the week. Individuals most vulnerable to the respiratory illness have been prioritized for the injection.

The Health Ministry has set up a committee to oversee the national vaccination program and ensure that health personnel and high-risk groups are the first to be immunized against the infectious disease.

Daily Corona Update

The Health Ministry reported 70 overnight deaths on Sunday, which took the national toll to 57,959, Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman of the ministry, said.

“Some 6,200 new infections were identified within 24 hours and 469 were hospitalized,” the health official said, adding that the newly detected cases pushed the total tally past 1.417 million.

According to Lari, no city is on coronavirus red alert, 18 are color-coded as orange, 124 as yellow and 306 as blue, which is the lowest-risk category.

Lari said more than 1.21 million have recovered from the respiratory illness and 3,900 remain in serious condition.

“Iran has carried out nearly 9.29 million PCR tests since the start of the outbreak,” she said.

Over 103.2 million have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 around the world and 2.23 million have died from the virus.