Iran has 500,000 people infected with coronavirus

Tehran's regime repeatedly refused to accept humanitarian aid from the US government.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
A volunteer from Basij forces sprays disinfectant as he sanitizes a bus station, amid coronavirus disease fears, in Tehran, Iran (photo credit: WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY)/ALI KHARA VIA REUTERS)
A volunteer from Basij forces sprays disinfectant as he sanitizes a bus station, amid coronavirus disease fears, in Tehran, Iran
(photo credit: WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY)/ALI KHARA VIA REUTERS)
A member of the National Coronavirus Combat Task Force for the Islamic Republic of Iran revealed on Monday that half a million people in the country are suffering from the deadly virus.
Hamid Souri told Iran's news agency IRNA that many patients afflicted with the coronavirus have not been detected – this according to an article from Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which reported on the IRNA news item.
Iran's Health Ministry claims that 60,500 Iranians are currently infected.
Souri termed the situation "worrisome,” and said there has been a spike in the virus across the provinces of Tehran, Razavi Khorasan, West Azerbaijan, Bushehr, Khuzestan and Kermanshah.
"The coronavirus curve has not flattened in any of the country's 31 provinces," Souri told IRNA.
Iran’s clerical rulers have faced accusations that they are fabricating statistics to hide the severity of the disease afflicting the population.
The Jerusalem Post reported that the death rate in Iran is “four to five times higher than the regime admitted then... The current figures are currently officially 55,743 sufferers and 3,452 dead. The current death toll is apparently much higher. On Sunday, it was 12,380, according to Western security sources.”
The Post report cited an article in the German daily Die Welt that obtained the numbers from Western security sources.
Ebrahim Raisi, the Islamic Republic’s chief judge and a possible successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, ordered that thousands of coronavirus deaths be attributed to diseases such as heart failure or pneumonia, the German paper reported.
Radio Farda wrote that its "independent estimate based on local media reports puts the number of those infected at 95,000 and the dead at 6,800.”
On Monday, the head of Iran's Health Ministry's public relations office, Kianush Jahanpur, said "24,236 people out of a total of 60,500 infected by the coronavirus have recovered, while 3,739 have unfortunately succumbed to death," according to Radio Farda.
IRNA reported that Jahanpur said that over the last 24 hours, 136 people died due to the coronavirus.
The PR head added that, "If the current procedure goes on, within seven to ten days we will witness the virus peaking again in Tehran." Iran is the epicenter of the Middle East coronavirus crisis. The clerical regime has refused to accept humanitarian aid from the US government.
A Swiss-run humanitarian and medical channel is operating to provide aid to Tehran. Iran's regime has used humanitarian aid in the past to fund malign activities in the Mideast, according to the US government.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: “There is no sanction on medicines going to Iran, there is no sanction on humanitarian assistance going into that country. They’ve got a terrible problem there and we want that humanitarian, medical assistance to get to the people of Iran.”
 On Monday, the State Department released an "Iran's Sanctions Relief Scam" fact sheet. According to the document, "In 2018, an Iranian 'humanitarian' company was sanctioned by the United States for masking payments that provided hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah and Hamas through the IRGC’s Quds Force.
"Iran’s slick foreign influence campaign to obtain sanctions relief is not intended for the relief or health of the Iranian people but to raise funds for its terror operations," wrote the State Department.