Iran on Tuesday announced 122 more deaths from the coronavirus, raising the official toll to 1,934 in one of the world's worst-hit countries, as it rejected help from international medical charities.
Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said a record 1,762 new cases were confirmed in Iran over the past 24 hours and 24,811 people were now known to have been infected.
Hours later, Doctors without Borders (MSF) said it did not understand a decision by Iranian authorities to cancel a mission it had arranged to set up a coronavirus treatment centre in Isfahan.
Michel-Olivier Lacharite, who is in charge of the MSF crisis response team, said the group was earlier given approval and was ready to set up the 50-bed unit at the end of the week.
Mr Lacharite said the group was still ready to set up in Iran or elsewhere on the region
The organisation on Sunday announced that it was sending the inflatable coronavirus clinic to the region to assist medical teams.
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MSF teams are loading medical equipment including inflatable hospital in Merignac airport on 21 March 2020 to be sent to Ispahan, Iran to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. -
MSF teams are loading medical equipment including inflatable hospital in Merignac airport on 21 March 2020 to be sent to Ispahan, Iran to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. -
Annual preparedness training for future deployers in Bordeaux in June 2017. This setting up exercise “from the containers to the ready to use unit” aims at creating and maintaining a roster of qualified medical and logistical deployers and users of the RDSU. -
Annual preparedness training for future deployers in Bordeaux in June 2017. This setting up exercise “from the containers to the ready to use unit” aims at creating and maintaining a roster of qualified medical and logistical deployers and users of the RDSU.
The inflatable hospital for critically ill patients was shipped from France and an emergency team of nine will run the unit alongside local staff, MSF said.
But early on Tuesday morning, Alireza Vahabzadeh, an adviser to Iran's health minister, tweeted his thanks to the charity group but said their plan for Isfahan was not needed.
“With the implementation of the national coronavirus mobilisation plan and the full use of the Armed Forces' medical capacity, there is no need to establish a hospital bed by foreign forces, and this presence is eliminated,” Mr Vahabzadeh tweeted early on Tuesday morning.
MSF later said: "We are waiting for official confirmations about the next steps."
Iran has the fourth-highest official death toll from the coronavirus after Italy, China and Spain but unlike those countries, it has yet to impose a lockdown on its citizens.
The country is in the middle of its two-week New Year holiday, Nowruz, when its roads fill with people visiting family.
Despite the authorities' appeals for people to stay home and the closure of shopping and leisure centres, many have taken to the roads as usual this year.
Mr Jahanpour said that when government offices reopened on Tuesday, many civil servants would be working from home.
"Only around a third of government staff are authorised to work in the office and only for administrative tasks vital to the public," he said.
Mr Jahanpour said that all offices would practise "social distancing".
