{"id":225469,"date":"2020-09-08T17:34:52","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T16:34:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=225469"},"modified":"2023-01-25T18:04:00","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T17:04:00","slug":"irans-coronavirus-death-toll-exceeds-100000-but-still-no-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/society\/irans-coronavirus-death-toll-exceeds-100000-but-still-no-intervention\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s Coronavirus Death Toll Exceeds 100,000, but Still No Intervention"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tehran_coronavirus_08092020\"<\/p>\n

On Monday, Iran\u2019s Health Ministry reported a 10-day high in its number of new coronavirus cases, plus 117 new deaths leading to an all-time total of 22,410. But even though these numbers seem to acknowledge that Iran\u2019s public health crisis \u2013 the worst in the Middle East \u2013 is by no means under control, they still represent drastic under-reporting of the impact on the country\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

In terms of death toll, the reality of the situation appears to be nearly five times worse than the official estimate. And the number of overall cases is most likely several orders of magnitude greater than the roughly 389,000 the regime has reported. We know this, in the first place, because the figures released by the Health Ministry simply do not comport with the facts on the ground in the Islamic Republic, where there been practically no coordinated government response, and where rampant poverty makes the public far more vulnerable to sickness and death.<\/p>\n

In a statement describing the current situation, Maryam Rajavi<\/a>, the president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)<\/a>, explained, \u201cKhamenei and the Revolutionary Guards<\/a>\u00a0do not spend even a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars they have plundered from the Iranian people to combat the Coronavirus.\u201d The NCRI<\/a> has previously issued a number of reports on the Revolutionary Guards\u2019 financial empire and the assets under the direct control of the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and it used these assessments to condemn the regime\u2019s apparent disinterest in using available funds for the good of the Iranian people.<\/p>\n

\"Maryam-Rajavi-1\"
Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the NCRI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Iran\u2019s coronavirus outbreak<\/a> was already months old when the regime’s President Hassan Rouhani requested the release of a mere one billion dollars from the country\u2019s sovereign wealth fund. Khamenei extended the delay for a few additional weeks before approving the fairly stingy measure. Of course, it did little good. And it is not even clear that the full amount was used for its intended purpose. The Health Ministry reports that it has only received about 350 million dollars since the start of the outbreak, and the NCRI noted on Monday that this only amounts to just over four dollars per person.<\/p>\n

Practically no direct assistance, or even meaningful guidance, has been provided to those people by the government. Quite the contrary, the regime risked amplifying the spread of Covid-19 in the earliest days when it adopted a policy of systematic disinformation while prioritizing the economy over the lives of its citizens. The country did lockdown in March, albeit briefly and incompletely. But the limits on movement and social activity began to be lifted in early April, long before such measures were taken in surrounding countries with much lower rates of infection.<\/p>\n

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In memory of 100,000 unknown victims of the Coronavirus in Iran<\/div><\/div>
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