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Tehran, Iran – As Iranians are angry and frustrated with the country’s COVID-19 response, the government has announced a six-day shutdown across the country to curb the alarming rise in deaths and infections.
National Anti-Coronavirus Task Force led by the President Ibrahim Raisi, Said Saturday that the nationwide closure will begin on Monday and last until Saturday. All offices, banks and non-essential businesses will be closed.
The city travel ban will also be implemented on Sunday morning and Saturday night.
Just earlier this month, Health Minister Saeed Namaki called on the military to implement a two-week emergency blockade to prevent the country’s strained health system from collapsing.
Due to the lack of strict enforcement by the authorities, the previous blockades could easily be ignored.
Whether this new effort will have a meaningful impact on containing the deadliest epidemic in the Middle East remains to be seen. Fifth wave Defined by the Delta variant.
The Ministry of Health said on Saturday that in the past 24 hours, another 466 Iranians have died of COVID-19 and more than 29,700 cases have been detected. The official death toll since February 2020 has exceeded 97,000, but officials say the actual number may be much higher.
Tehran experienced its deadliest day on record on Friday, when 390 people died, of which 216 died of COVID-19. This figure broke the grim record in the 51-year history of the Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery, the largest capital of Iran.
The latest color-coded map indicating the severity of the epidemic shows that zero cities are classified as “blue”, which means that the alert level is the lowest. In other words, as many as 358 counties, covering almost all of the country’s 31 provinces, are classified as “red”.
Beginning Tuesday, the rituals of Muharram, the holy month of Islam across the country, have raised concerns that the death toll may rise to a higher level.
Earlier this week, a large number of videos from multiple provinces showed people mourning in a cramped space, and many people did not wear masks.
This prompted the authorities to adjust the Muharram health agreement to no longer allow activities in indoor spaces and prohibit collective ceremonies on the street.
Videos of the entire hospital—patients lying on the ground or in the yard—and queues in pharmacies sometimes facing shortages of life-saving drugs have become commonplace.
Slow vaccination and public outrage
Although the pace of vaccine promotion in Iran has accelerated in recent weeks, the country is still far from being vaccinated for most of its 83 million people.
Only 14.7 million people received at least one dose, while fewer than 4 million received two full doses.
Vaccination centers often have long queues, sometimes long queues, and waiting times of up to several hours.
So far, vaccines have been imported from China, Russia, India, Cuba, Japan and the global COVAX initiative, but officials have criticized why no more doses have been purchased, which will only arouse public outrage.
President Raisi said on Saturday that 30 million doses have been imported, but did not specify the source. 60 million doses are needed to control the pandemic.
The country’s first locally-developed vaccine, COVIran Barekat, has received more than 1 million doses, but there have been multiple delays in large-scale production, and officials have failed to explain why.
In recent days, some Iranians have used the hashtag #SoSIran on social media and tagged the World Health Organization in an attempt to draw attention to their plight.
Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei banned the import of vaccines produced in the United States and the United Kingdom in January, saying he did not trust them because they might want to test their products on other people.
Khamenei said on Wednesday that the pandemic is now the country’s top priority and that “we must redouble our efforts to provide people with vaccines through any necessary means”.
Although it is unlikely to be a retrospective of his initial ban, this sentence seems to be an effort to find loopholes. A health official said earlier this week that Pfizer and other vaccines made in the United States and the United Kingdom may be imported if they are produced in other countries.
At the same time, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Hussein Salami officially praised the outgoing Minister of Health Namaki and the head of the Tehran Anti-Coronavirus Task Force Ali Rezazali on Thursday.
“Without some of our efforts, today we will witness more than 1,300 deaths every day,” said the minister, who earlier this month claimed that “the whole world is in awe” for how Iran responded to the epidemic. .
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