Iran is secretive about the dimensions of the Corona
·
20 March 2020
·
Coronavirus pandemic
Iran is facing one of the largest
coronavirus outbreaks in the world. Today, as families celebrate Persian New
Year, Nowruz, there is concern the true scale of the virus is being downplayed
by the government and could rapidly get much worse.
Mohammad has been working relentlessly
since the coronavirus outbreak to save the lives of his patients. The hospital
doctor, who works in the northern province of Gilan, has not seen his family
for 14 days. He has lost colleagues. He has lost friends - including his former
mentor, his teacher at medical school who recently fell victim to coronavirus.
"It's not just our
hospital. The coronavirus outbreak has paralysed our whole health system,"
says Mohammad.
"The morale of
staff is very low. Our families are so worried and we are under enormous
pressure."
Mohammad's name has been changed
because speaking out against the government in Iran risks arrest. But several
doctors from across the country's northern provinces have spoken to the BBC
about the dire conditions they are facing, and how badly they think the
government has handled the crisis.
"We don't even
have enough masks. Our medical staff are dying on a daily basis," says
Mohammad.
"I do not know how
many people died but the government is trying to cover up the true scale of the
crisis. They lied in the early days of the outbreak."
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage
captionA medical professional supports a patient to hospital in Iran
In just 16 days, Covid-19 spread
throughout all 31 provinces in Iran.
On top of this, 16 countries claim
they have cases of the virus that originated in Iran. They are Iraq,
Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Canada,
Pakistan, Georgia, Estonia, New Zealand, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Qatar and Armenia.
However, critics of the authorities
say the government of Iran has continued to downplay the outbreak.
In its first announcement on 19
February, the government told people not to worry about the virus. Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Iran's "enemies" of exaggerating
the threat.
A week later, as the number of
cases and deaths surged, President Hassan Rouhani echoed the Supreme Leader's
words and warned against the "conspiracies and fear-mongering of our
enemies". He said these were designed to bring the country to a standstill
and urged Iranians to continue their everyday lives and carry on going to work.
Most recently, state-controlled TV
programmes announced the coronavirus could be a US-manufactured
"bioweapon", with the Supreme Leader tweeting about a "biological
attack".
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage
captionIran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
As of 20 March, nearly 1,300 people
have died and nearly 18,000 people have been infected, according to the Iranian
health ministry.
Iran is the third worst-hit country
behind China and Italy.
Doctors from three of the worst-hit
provinces in Iran - Gilan, Golestan and Mazandarn - have told the BBC that
there are very few coronavirus testing kits, and medical supplies are limited -
including basic medicines, oxygen tanks, sterilised masks, and protective
scrubs and gloves.
Doctors are now having to kit out
temporary field hospitals. One intensive care doctor described how her local
football stadium was being equipped with beds to handle the overflow of patients.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage
captionSome factories in the capital Tehran are now producing medical equipment
24 hours a day
Every doctor the BBC spoke to said
that based on their experience, the official statistics must be much lower than
the reality.
One doctor, an A&E medic from Golestan Province, says her hospital receives an
average of 300 patients a day. She estimates that 60%-70% of those are infected
with coronavirus, but due to lack of resources, only those who are critically
ill are admitted.
And only those who are admitted to
hospital are counted in the official statistics.
The doctor describes having lost
five patients a day on average over the past two weeks. She says that often by
the time someone has arrived with a coronavirus testing kit, her patient has
already died.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage
captionMedical staff bring in another patient suspected of Coronavirus
Also devastating for medical staff
is the loss of their own. Medical professionals said they had recently lost a number
of colleagues.
One heartbreaking case was that of
25-year-old Narjes Khanalizadeh, a nurse from the northern city of Lahijan who
died towards the end of February.
A photo of her went viral on social
media. But the government denied she had died of Covid-19.
Image captionNarjes Khanalizadeh
collapsed on 23 February and died two days later
State-controlled TV channels
continued to portray an image of easy-going and fearless medical staff working
on the front line, courageously battling the virus and saving their patients.
But shortly after her death, the
Iranian Nursing Organisation confirmed Narjes had died of coronavirus.
How did the virus spread so fast?
According to the government, there
were two "patient zeros", both of whom died in the city of Qom on 19
February. One, it said, was a businessman who contracted the disease in China.
Qom quickly became the epicentre of
the outbreak.
The city is an important pilgrimage
destination for Shia Muslims. It is home to the country's top Islamic clerics,
and draws some 20 million domestic and around 2.5 million international
tourists a year. Each week, thousands of pilgrims navigate the city, paying
their respects by kissing and touching the numerous shrines and landmarks.
-Askari Mosque in Qom has been closed
since the outbreak
The virus spread quickly and the
number of cases began to soar. But instead of quickly quarantining the city,
representatives of the Supreme Leader - such as cleric Mohammad Saeedi -
campaigned for pilgrims to keep on visiting.
"We consider this
holy shrine to be a place of healing. That means people should come here to
heal from both spiritual and physical diseases."
in reverence
Richard Brennan, director of
emergency operations for the World Health Organization (WHO), who recently returned
from Qom, said: "Due to the special religious nature of Qom, with
religious tourists coming from inside and outside Iran, the virus spread
rapidly across the country."
He said during his visit he had
seen a "genuine effort" to increase operations in testing labs and
hospitals in Qom and the capital Tehran.
The city's shrines have now been
closed.
Image copyrightMEHDI MARIZADImage
captionPeople gather outside the closed doors of the Fatima shrine in Iran's
holy city of Qom
Did the government downplay the
outbreak?
February saw two major events for
the country - the 41st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution and the
parliamentary elections.
"The first days
that my colleagues and I recorded an abnormal respiratory disease were days
before the Islamic Revolution victory day on 11 February," recalls one
senior doctor, who says he sent multiple reports from his hospital to senior
health ministers in Tehran warning of the outbreak.
"We believe that
health officials decided to hide the fact that coronavirus had reached Iran to
have their usual state-sponsored gatherings."
the Islamic Revolution anniversary
in Azadi (Freedom) square
Both the anniversary event and the
elections were seen as a test of the government's popularity, after six months
of chaos endured by Iranians.
These included violent protests in
November following a fuel price hike, and rising tensions with the US, after
Iran attacked a base in Iraq housing American troops in retaliation for the
killing of the top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.
The downing of a Ukrainian plane
that led to the death of all 176 people on board dented public trust after
officials initially denied the plane had been hit by a missile.
Shortly after the election, Iran's
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused Iran's "enemies" of
exaggerating the threat of coronavirus to keep voters away from the polls.
"Negative
propaganda was launched several months ago, and in the last two days their
media has used every opportunity to discourage people from casting their vote on
the pretext of an illness and virus," said Mr Khamenei.
More recently, Iran's health
minister Saeed Namaki, rejected all claims of delaying reports, with state TV
announcing "the issue was immediately announced [19 Feb] despite the fact
the election was was due to be held that Friday [21 Feb]".
Five days after the election, the
number of cases confirmed by the government had risen to 139 with 19 dead.
The same day, Ahmad Amirabadi
Farahani, a hardline MP from Qom, stood up in parliament and said 50 people had
died in his city over a two-week period.
Deputy health minister Iraj
Harirchi denied Mr Farahani's claim, and said he would resign if the death toll
stood at even half that number.
Later that day, Harirchi was seen
sweating profusely and coughing during a press conference on coronavirus. He
later announced he had tested positive, becoming the first of many high-profile
Iranian politicians to become infected.
Harirchi reportedly has since made
a "full recovery" appearing live on television on 13 March.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage
captionDeputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi wipes his sweat during a press
conference
Numerous experts and journalists
have suggested the official figures are a dangerous and vast underestimate of
the true scale of the crisis in Iran, including a BBC Persian investigation which established on a single day, the death toll to be six
times higher than reported.
But as even the official figures
continue to soar, the question now for Iranians is how to stop the virus.
Living in lockdown
Alireza's father passed away in
mid-March.
"Nobody in our
family was there when they buried my father. I didn't even get to see his body.
They just told us he'd died and had been buried in a special zone in Tehran's
main cemetery."
For safety, Alireza's name has been
changed.
Alireza's family were told by the
authorities not to gather for a funeral but that they would be able to visit
the grave once her father had been buried.
But upon arriving at the cemetery,
she was told by staff it wasn't safe to enter because they were still burying
so many other bodies.
"We talk more
about the burial of my father than his death," she says. "I'm not a
religious, or even spiritual person, but I still have this strange feeling
inside, as if we disrespected my father."
The Iranian authorities have now
banned all large funeral gatherings.
Several clerics, including the
Supreme Leader, have also issued religious fatwas against the traditional
washing of dead bodies, to protect those working as "mordeshoors" -
or body-washers.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage
captionFirefighters disinfect the Tajrish Bazaar, Tehran, Iran
As the WHO calls for international
"urgent and aggressive action", Iran's response continues to fall
short of the measures implemented in countries such as China or Italy.
Schools, universities and
seminaries have been closed, football matches cancelled, and a large-scale
disinfection campaign has begun in the capital city, Tehran. All Iranians have
been advised against travel and told to stay at home. And for the first time
since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Friday prayers have
been cancelled.
In an attempt to prevent the spread
of the disease in overcrowded jails, 155,000 prisoners were also temporarily
released. This includes political prisoners, many
of whom are believed to be in poor health, among them British-Iranian charity
worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
However, most government buildings,
offices and banks remain open.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage
captionA prevention campaign poster in the capital Tehran
Even for middle-class Iranians such
as retired teachers Fatemeh and her husband - not their real names - say the
problem is most people are still reliant on cash for buying everything from
groceries to fuel.
'We have to go to the bank to
collect our monthly pension. We are expecting to receive the Nowruz [Persian
new year] special allowance in the coming days.''
Many medical experts inside and
outside Iran say unless the government establishes transparent incident figures
and moves to quarantine whole cities such as Qom, the virus will continue to
cripple the entire country.
President Rouhani has repeatedly
said the government will not place cities under lockdown and for "all
shops to remain open and everyone to continue doing business", a decision
many believe is simply because Iran cannot afford to do otherwise. The US
sanctions have devastated the economy.
Persian new year is the country's
biggest annual festival. Ayatollah Khamenei used the event to praise the
country's "dazzling" sacrifices in responding to the outbreak.
For Fatemeh, it has never seemed
less of a moment to celebrate.
"In all my life, I
don't ever remember staying home alone for Nowruz. Even during the war, when
Saddam started attacking cities with missiles, we would visit each other during
Nowruz."
پیش بسوی قیام سراسری ، ما بر اندازیم# کانونهای شورشی در شهرهای ایران #
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بر اندازیم#
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