Im Iran stirbt alle zwei Minuten ein Mensch an Covid-19

Überall im Nahen Osten steigen die Zahlen von Neuinfizierten, besonders schlimm ist es einmal mehr im Iran, wo die Lage erneut außer Kontrolle gerät:

One person is now dying with Covid-19 every two minutes in Iran, state TV has said, as the Middle East’s worst-hit nation reported a new record daily toll of 588 fatalities.

Reuters reports that with authorities complaining of poor social distancing, state media say hospitals in several cities have run out of beds for new patients. Some social media users have criticised a slow vaccination campaign, with only about 4% of the 83 million population fully inoculated.

“Every two seconds one person gets infected in Iran and almost every two minutes one person dies from the coronavirus,” state TV said, adding that most of Iran’s 31 provinces have moved from the lower risk orange level to red alert. That compares to a reported rate of about one death per three minutes a month ago, Reuters reports.

In January, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, banned imports of US- and British-made vaccines, saying they were unreliable and may propagate the infection. Iran has blamed US sanctions for hampering purchases and deliveries of vaccines from other nations.

Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, who received his first dose of a homegrown Covid-19 vaccine in public yesterday, has urged officials to speed up vaccinations and to use “all necessary means” for curbing the pandemic, state media reported.