Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, April 26, 2020—In fear of nationwide protests, the regime ruling Iran is covering up the true number of coronavirus deaths and cases. While the regime’s Health Minister has acknowledged that the virus outbreak in Iran was discovered back in mid-January and he had alerted top officials about it, they ignored warnings and deliberately misled the public on the existence of the virus, and number of cases and deaths, to prevent it from impacting their orchestrated 1979 anniversary march, the February 21 sham Majlis (parliament) elections, and thus maintaining their regime in power.
In many cities, at the time of issuance of burial permissions, officials are registering the cause of death as respiratory problems, cardiac arrest, and influenza! Reza Malekzadeh, Deputy Health Minister shockingly acknowledged that, “We noticed the COVID-19 virus in Iran a little late. We had extensive contacts and travelling to China, and the virus entered Iran and considered as Influenza.” (State TV Channel 5—March 13, 2020)
Revealing the regime’s Goebbels style cover-up
Following revelations made by the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and published information about the mullahs’ criminal cover-up, the regime officially banned any distribution public information.
Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani said on February 26: “We will not decrease or increase the current statistics! If anyone dies of this disease, we will let the people know, but everyday people naturally die in all cities, some die because of flu, some people die because of influenza, we must not connect these cases to coronavirus.”
The state-run daily Resalat quoted Iran’s Secretary General of House of Nurses saying the numbers of patients, nurses and doctors infected with COVID-19 is a matter of security and will not be published anywhere. Even hospitals directors are not aware and only a “special channel” exists for this issue.
On March 3, Iranian regime Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei desperately said, “From the first day, our honest officials and authorities have announced the news with transparency.” (State TV Channel 1—March 3, 2020)
On April 9, Khamenei backed his regime’s engineered coronavirus statistics in his remarks. “In comparison to other problems, this is very small. Ten million people died during two major world wars and in this coronavirus situation, they say one million have died around the world. About the statistics, many good things have been said and the national radio and television acted very well.”
Falling in line, the state-run daily Setareh Sobh acknowledged on April 11 that based on a survey in Tehran, people do not believe in the official statistics. The paper added that there is evidence that the novel coronavirus entered the country in January or early February.
Majlis’ report, tip of the iceberg
The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf wrote on March 21 that “while the official numbers announced by Iranian authorities report 1,500 deaths and 20,000 cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that the actual statistics are at least five times the official numbers. This assessment makes Iran the worst country in the world and has no end in sight… authorities have failed in all perspectives.”
The Research Center of the Iranian regime’s parliament said in a report on April 14 titled “Comprehensive control status of COVID-19 and predicting a second disease outbreak wave” summarized the situation until April 4 and acknowledged some of the regime’s lies in the following matters:
First: Acknowledgement of fake statistics
“Based on the sensitivity of the tests performed and the sampling method, about 30-40 percent of patients with lung scans report a negative test despite having ongoing symptoms. Therefore, it can be estimated that the actual number of deaths that could not be counted is many times higher than the obtained statistics, and the number of cases are eight or ten times higher than official numbers,” said according to the report . This is while until April 15, the Health Ministry’s official numbers of the deceased was 4,777 and the 76,389 cases. (State-run IRNA news agency—April 15, 2020)
Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi acknowledged: “The number of people affected are much higher. “It is certainly true that 800,000 people could have been infected and we have more deaths.” (State-run Daily Entekhab—April 15, 2020)
If we take the statistics of 800,000 patients, which was confirmed by the regime’s Deputy Health Minister, and calculate the number of deaths at 6.19 percent, the result is 49,520 deaths according to a document published by the Parliamentary Research Center.
The state-run daily Sharq mentioned on April 15 contradicting the regime’s statistics: “Yesterday, the Health Ministry spokesperson notified for the first time a decline in the death toll due to COVID-19, a statistic that does not match the statistics of burials in Tehran due to the novel coronavirus.
Nahid Khodakarami, Chairwomen of the Tehran City Council Health Committee said, “Based on the statistics that I have received, 70 people die every day in most optimistic scenario, and over 100 people die in Tehran in the worst case scenario.” (State-run Sharq daily—April 15, 2020)
Second: Fake statistics of COVID-19 cases based on RT-PCR test
“At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in the country, in the COVID-19 Patient Reporting Protocol, cases were based on definitive positive reports confirmed by RT-PCR testing. The test is being performed on patients who are hospitalized with severe symptoms. Which means, people who become infected with the virus, and because of asymptomatic or mild symptoms do not need to be hospitalized or do not go to medical centers at all, are not counted in this statistic.”
The conclusion is that the regime’s daily numbers of positive cases are unreal and only includes patients who are tested in hospitals and thus hospitalized. While there are a large number of patients that lack the financial capability to go to a hospital. They live in rural areas, have no access to medical centers and are not counted in the numbers.
Referring to the increase in coronavirus cases, Ruholamini of Tehran Medical Sciences University said: “The cases in the first weeks, those who were definitely positive, maybe three and a half times more of them are probably in our society where we either don’t have a sign or we don’t have access, and this is a different coefficient.” (State-run Salamat Network—April 13, 2020)
Third: Disease cover-up by registering flu cases
The regime’s propaganda apparatus had registered any coronavirus case as pulmonary, respiratory and influenza patients, and non-corona and doubtful, and even had them hastily buried.
Hossein Erfanian, Head of the Infectious Diseases Care Department of the Health Ministry, said on December 21, 2019, that “the death toll from the flu has risen to 106 and in the last week 3,354 people with respiratory diseases were hospitalized, of which 82 were infected with the flu.” (State-run IRNA news agency—December 21, 2019)
The Parliamentary Research Center report also indicated: “Test sensitivity of RT-PCR varies (depending on the sampling location) of the throat, nose and lungs. When the test was performed and how it was sampled…that means about 30-40 percent of the patients report negative results despite definitive signs in their lung scans.”
According to the same report, between 30% and 40% of the patients, despite undergoing lung scans, still render a negative test result, and therefore these patients’ deaths are registered as non-COVID-19.
Fourth: Lying about numbers of improved from the disease
Iran ruled by the mullahs’ regime is one of the COVID-19 epicenters in the world. However, the statistics provided are considered suspicious by many global health experts.
The Associated Press reported on April 9: “Iran has reported more than 66,000 confirmed cases of the virus and nearly 4,100 deaths but experts have repeatedly questioned these statistics, especially when Iran downplayed the virus outbreak during the forty-first anniversary of the 1957 Revolution and the parliamentary elections in February.”
The WHO ranks mortality among the following factors. Factors in which the regime in Iran ranks as one of the lowest in the world. This is how we can find out how fake the regime’s statistics actually are.
“The number of tests, methods and equipment that each country uses to test coronavirus varies. Geographical conditions and the extent of border control, health facilities, including the number of hospital beds, special care and equipped with breathing apparatus and health system infrastructure can play an important role in diagnosing cases and the rate of recovery and death of patients.” (Deutsche Welle—April 8, 2020)
Mullah-style faked statistics
According to Iran’s Health Ministry spokesperson Kianoush Jahanpour, between the official announcement of the corona outbreak in Iran (February 19) until April 8, nearly 221,000 COVID-19 tests has been conducted across the country. Which means 4,420 tests in 50 days. (State-run IRNA news agency—April 8, 2020)
Comparing the facilities and health infrastructure of Germany and the regime in Iran, the Deutsche Welle Persian Service questioned the regime’s statistics. “At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, the capacity of German laboratories was not more than 7,000 tests per day, and increased rapidly in a short time period. The numbers of COVID-19 affected in Germany until April 8 was about 107,000 and the number of recovered was about 36,000 people.”
With regard to a huge difference between the assets of the Islamic Republic and Germany, including in the field of testing and early detection of coronavirus, it is unbelievable that the ratio of recovering people in Iran is higher than in Germany and most other countries in the world.
Commentating on the regime’s daily lowering of the fatalities, Iranian opposition President Maryam Rajavi, head of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said: In recent days, the regime’s Health Ministry officials are clumsily mimicking the European countries, where the death toll has actually decreased, and are announcing figures dictated by the mullahs’ supreme leader Ali Khamenei. But one cannot deceive the public by engineering the figures, just as the Iranian people did not believe Hassan Rouhani’s claim that he had been unaware of the spread of Coronavirus to Iran until February 19, 2020.
