{"id":245312,"date":"2021-08-21T07:55:18","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T12:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=245312"},"modified":"2023-01-31T17:48:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T16:48:25","slug":"iran-regimes-adverse-impact-on-the-covid-19-crisis-grows-increasingly-visible-to-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-regimes-adverse-impact-on-the-covid-19-crisis-grows-increasingly-visible-to-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Regime\u2019s Adverse Impact on the COVID-19 Crisis Grows Increasingly Visible to All"},"content":{"rendered":"

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More than 650 Iranians died from Covid-19 during a 24-hour period at the start of this week. Around the same time, large segments of the country entered into their latest government-imposed lockdown, but the mitigation measures are only scheduled to last six days, will be accompanied by zero financial support for a financially beleaguered population, and will most likely be only weakly enforced. That weakness appears all the more negligent when viewed in context with the regime\u2019s recent willingness to open fire on crowds and conduct mass arrests in order to disrupt public demonstrations against various government policies and practices.
\nIran is presently in the midst of its fifth wave of coronavirus infections. The peak of that wave may still be some weeks off, and it is conceivable that the brief lockdown will only exacerbate the problem by allowing new infections to incubate in isolation but not run their course before people once again flood into public places in a desperate effort to make a living while also burying and mourning their deceased loved ones.
\nAuthorities previously made concerted efforts to blame US sanctions for the severity of the crisis, but over time it has become clear to even the most casual observers that the sanctions are not preventing the import of vaccines or other life-saving drugs. Quite to the contrary, American philanthropists attempted to donate tens of thousands of vaccine doses to Iran very soon after they became available, but it was the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who prevented the deal from being concluded when he announced that no American or British-made vaccines would be permitted for distribution to Iranians. As a direct consequence of this obstructionism, Iran has struggled to get beyond a vaccination rate of three percent. Furthermore, existing vaccination records skew heavily toward the wealth and the well-connected. Khamenei tasked corrupt entities affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps<\/a> to handle vaccine distribution. As a result, after being assured by the Health Ministry that vaccinations would be free, Iranians found that many of the available doses were making their way to the black market, where they appeared with prohibitive price tags of up to 1,350 dollars each.<\/p>\n

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COVID-19 Claims 300,000 Victims in Iran<\/div><\/div>
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