Hospitals in many Iranian provinces are running out of capacity to handle Covid-19 cases, health authorities say, with the coronavirus now killing about 300 people a day – or one person every five minutes.
Authorities have complained of poor social distancing, and Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi said the pandemic could cause 600 daily deaths in coming weeks if Iranians failed to respect health protocols in the Middle East's hardest-affected country.
A caption that ran on state television news said an Iranian died of coronavirus every five minutes, a rate that corresponds to daily death tallies reported by the authorities of marginally above or below 300 over the past 20 days.
Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on Sunday that 32,616 people had died of the disease and the number of confirmed cases had reached 568,896.
Some experts have doubted the accuracy of Iran's official coronavirus tallies. A report by the Iranian parliament's research centre in April suggested that the coronavirus numbers might be almost twice as high as those announced by the Health Ministry.
The report said that Iran's official coronavirus figures were based only on the number of deaths in hospitals and those who had already tested positive for the coronavirus.
Schools, mosques, shops, restaurants and other public institutions in Tehran have been closed since October 3. As Covid-19 cases and deaths continued to hit record levels, the closure was extended until November 20, Iran's state TV reported.
Officials said "extreme measures and limitations" will be imposed for one week in at least 43 counties where the infection rates have been alarming. Twenty-one of Iran's 31 provinces are on a coronavirus red alert.
Iran has blamed US sanctions for hampering Tehran's efforts to tackle the outbreak. Washington, accusing Iran of "incompetent and deadly governance", has refused to lift sanctions that were reimposed after 2018 withdrawal of US from Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with six powers.
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