Reporting by PMOI/MEK
Iran, April 19, 2020—Over 32,200 people have died of the novel coronavirus in 294 cities checkered across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to reports tallied by the Iranian opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) as of Sunday afternoon local time, April 19. The official death count declared by the regime is 5,118, less than a sixth of the actual figure.
The death toll in various provinces include: 5,350 in Tehran, 2,990 in Qom, 2,560 in Razavi Khorasan, 2,120 in Mazandaran, 1,390 in Khuzestan, 860 in West Azerbaijan, 850 in Fars, 600 in Ardabil, 515 in Kurdistan, 410 in Kerman, 375 in Sistan & Baluchistan, and 105 in Hormozgan. This is in addition to figures reported in other provinces.
Over 32,200 dead of coronavirus (COVID-19) in Iran
Hospital sources and eyewitness reports indicate that to this day 800 coronavirus patients have died in Tehran’s Shariati Hospital alone. Due to the high number of COVID-19 patients, they have even placed beds in the hospital’s basement.
Over 100 coronavirus patients have died in Tehran’s Sattari Hospital alone. Ali Maher, a member of the Tehran COVID-19 Task Force HQ said 138 public and private hospitals in Tehran are accepting coronavirus patients, according to a piece published on April 18 by the state-run Iran daily.
The cemetery in the city of Qom, known as a major COVID-19 hotbed in Iran and located in the central parts of the country, is facing a crisis with increasing coronavirus deaths. Some victims are buried in mass graves outside of the city.
A report from inside the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) indicates that 3,926 coronavirus cases were registered in IRGC hospitals of Tehran as of April 1. These include IRGC members and their relatives: 2,585 IRGC members, 695 relatives and 646 retirees.
Despite these harsh realities, Iranian regime President Hassan Rouhani continued his daily lies on Sunday, April 19. “The stats we are receiving from our hospitals in the past few days are more joyous than ever before. The number of people hospitalized have decreased, including those who were in dire conditions, and the number of deaths have decreased,” he said. “Medium-risk jobs, such as store owners in roofed markets and or shopping centers, will be beginning their work as of Monday, April 20,” Rouhani continued.
Alireza Zali, the head of the Coronavirus Task Force in Tehran, warned about crowded metros in Tehran. “Changing the infrastructure of the metro in a short timespan to reduce the spread of the coronavirus epidemic is unlikely and impossible,” the state-run Asr-e Iran daily quoted him as saying.
Zali also warned about a 7-percent increase of coronavirus patients in the special treatment departments of Tehran’s hospitals and said, “Despite all recommendations, we are worried about the registration of 91 new cases in the special care departments of Tehran’s hospitals in one day alone. At present, patients in critical conditions refer to hospitals.”
On Sunday, Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, the president of Tehran’s City Council, said, “The members of the City Council are concerned about the normalization of the coronavirus situation based on the official stats provided by the Health Ministry. Regretfully, these concerns have not been met with kind responses by the spokesperson of the Health Ministry.”
Rafsanjani added, “The assessment of the Parliamentary Research Center and the opinion of experts indicate that the country’s coronavirus cases are much more numerous than the officially declared figure. The difference is due to different factors, including delays in declaring the start of the coronavirus outbreak and not calculating prior cases, insufficient testing and declaring other types of diseases such as respiratory disease and corona-like illness.”
Furthermore, the state-run Asr-e Iran daily reported on Sunday citing Mohammad Javad Haghshenas, head of the Tehran City Council Health Commission, “Wrong stats can place people’s lives in danger and result in irreversible losses to people’s lives and their property, and public property. These measures can be legally and morally binding. If the Task Force HQ officials lack precise and transparent information, they will be held accountable for the manslaughter of Iranian citizens and they also must answer for all these deaths resulting from wrong decisions and not correctly living up to their duties.”
The state-run Etemad daily reported on Sunday citing Siamak Samie, Director General of the Health Ministry Laboratories saying, “The certain positive cases are those that are proven through PCR-RT tests and those individuals who are hospitalized with acute symptoms will be tested. Therefore, patients or deaths that are not screened through such a medical process are not registered as coronavirus cases. This is based on China’s experience and involves around 80 percent of the patients… Around 10,000 tests are carried out each day in Iran while the number of tests in Germany are more than 110,000 each day.”
The state-run Arman newspaper wrote, “The reopening of the Tehran bazaar and the high-traffic streets that are not bound by traffic-control rules will soon cause a new wave of epidemic in the country and will threaten the lives of millions of people.”
Meanwhile, regime officials are terrified of the possible protests following the coronavirus outbreak. MP Gholam Ali Jafarzadeh Imenabadi said, “We will have high unemployment rates after the coronavirus… Currently, we have 3-5 million unemployed people. Imagine what will happen if one million unemployed are added to their numbers. In the post-coronavirus situation, we will face a high unemployment rate, the shutdown of small and large workshops, an increase in product prices, a spike in inflation. The fever of our already-sick economy will further increase and we will face a high economic fever.”
The state-run Aftab-e Yazd once again warned, “Iran has billions of dollars in reserve and thousands of billions of dollars’ worth of assets which can help the country and reduce the threat of a financial and economic downfall. By levying taxes on institutions that have been exempt from taxes for years, we can adopt effective steps to improve public hygiene and support workers and impoverished and vulnerable segments of the society.”
The Iranian Resistance has time and again asserted that the regime has vast financial resources overseen by regime supreme leader Ali Khamenei, which can be employed to help the Iranian people pass through the coronavirus crisis. But the regime has once again proven that it values its hold on power above the lives of the Iranian population.
The IRGC and the regime’s major financial institutions, that have plundered the Iranian people’s wealth, can pay for the expenses of workers, wage earners and the unemployed to protect them during the lockdown to protect them from contracting the #COVID19 #Iran pic.twitter.com/6RwpkH8q6r
— Maryam Rajavi (@Maryam_Rajavi) April 14, 2020
