The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK) announced on Wednesday, April 15, 2020, that the coronavirus death toll had exceeded 29,000 in 278 cities.
The number of victims in Tehran is 4,700, Qom 2,750, Isfahan 2,120, Khuzestan 1,190, Golestan 1,030, West Azerbaijan 880, East Azerbaijan 775, Fars 770, Lorestan 660, Semnan 490, Central Province 470, Bushehr 170, and Hormozgan 85.
Despite increases in the number of deceased, Rouhani repeated his lies today. He said, “No patient has been refused access to a hospital in any province or city across the country. There have been no cases of bed shortages, ICU beds if a patient required special attention… We know of not even a single case over the past three months of anyone not being admitted to hospital due to poverty…. Everyone (had been admitted) with their insurance and in the case of financial difficulties, patients have not been charged…. Our enemies should stop the propaganda that last year, the government was in a bad situation, and this year is going to be worse…. This year will be a good year… They portray a bleak circumstance and want to terrorize the people, but these are total lies and without foundation.”
Meanwhile, the regime’s officials and experts as well as state-run media repeatedly reject the official fatality figures and warn about the increasing scope of the pandemic in Iran. The Health Committee of Tehran’s City Council told Sharq daily today, “Based on figures that are available to me, in the best case scenario 70 and in the worst case scenario more than 100 people die due to Covid-19 in Tehran on a daily basis.” Such, fatalities are 4,000 to 6,000 only in Tehran.
Today, Entekhab daily quoted Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raissi as saying, “We cannot have a precise assessment of the actual figure (of the fatalities), and we cannot multiply our statistics by two to three, but definitely the cases that we have registered do not reflect the real statistics… The scope of those who have been infected is much larger. That 800,000 people have been infected and the number of those who have died is several times the number we have announced are definitely accurate.”
In an interview with state-controlled TV, Alireza Zali, the Director of the Coronavirus Combat Task force in Tehran, said, “We have not reached the peak yet. The trend is still upward… Given the wide scope of the Tehran population, it is natural that our statistics cannot be compatible and comparable with any other part of the country and why we essentially see that Tehran is the epicenter of the diseases.”
The report on coronavirus by Research Center of the Parliament states, “In the next cold season, we are expected to experience the disease again, and the first and second waves in Iran would most probably be not distinguishable under the current situation (namely the lengthy course needed to control the first wave of epidemic)”. The report estimates that the number of deaths is almost double (the official figure), and that infected patients are 8 to 10 times more than the official figure.
A faculty member at Tehran University of Medical Sciences said, “The virus starts with a health threat and then becomes a social threat and then a security threat. We now have 80,000 positive tests, but … the total number of people who have been infected … is probably between 5 to 10 times more, maybe even more.”
In another development, while the clerical regime refuses to pay for workers, the regime’s media revealed today that the International Monetary Fund estimated in its November 2019 report that Iran’s total foreign currency reserves and gold at the end of 2019 amounted to $85.5 billion. These figures, of course, do not include the hundreds of billions of dollars in the possession of the major economic cartels controlled by Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
April 15, 2020