“The freshly identified cases took the national total to 663,800 and the new deaths pushed the toll to 37,409,” Health Ministry’s Spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari was quoted as saying by ISNA.
President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday pointed to the increasing number of patients visiting hospitals and said, “Immediate intervention by imposing strict restrictions in red regions will be an effective solution.”
During the National Coronavirus Taskforce meeting chaired by the president, new measures such as restrictions on city movements and a night curfew on non-essential businesses were discussed.
If approved in Saturday’s session, the government will impose a curfew on vehicle movement from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. for a one-month period in all 31 provincial capitals. It will also shut down all non-essential businesses daily at 6 p.m. for a month.
Iran has in recent weeks reinstated lockdown disciplines in 25 provincial capitals and 89 counties with high transmission rates to slow the spread of the virus.
Iran’s death rate due to the coronavirus pandemic has been “very concerning”, one of the Health Ministry’s deputies, Iraj Harirchi, said.
“We will not see a decline in hospitalizations, infections and deaths, as long as there is no decline in movements and exposure.”
The health official noted that people’s movement have only decreased by 6% compared to normal circumstances.
“During March and April, when we were able to contain the outbreak, movements had dropped to half its usual level,” he added.
Lari said over half a million coronavirus patients have recovered from the infectious disease and some 5,500 are hospitalized in intensive care units.
Iran has performed 5.14 million PCR tests in the past eight months, she added.
Global Covid-19 cases climbed to 49.1 million on Friday and fatalities rose above 1.24 million.