Corona in Iran: a death every two minutes and an injury every two seconds

Iranian state television reported today, Monday, that one person dies every two minutes with Covid-19, while the most affected country in the Middle East from the pandemic recorded a new record number of daily deaths from the disease, which reached 588. The

 authorities complain that citizens ignore the rules of social separation, and the media says Official Hospitals in many cities no longer have capacity to accommodate more patients. Some social media users criticized the country's ruling religious establishment for the slow vaccination campaign, as only four percent of the country's 83 million people have received vaccines to prevent the disease in both doses so far.

 The total number of deaths from the disease so far has reached 94,603, according to the Ministry of Health, while cases of infection have increased by 40,808 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to four million and 199,537 cases in a fifth wave of outbreak that is attributed to the spread of the highly contagious delta strain of the virus.

 "Every two seconds, a new person is infected in Iran, and approximately every two minutes a person dies from the Corona virus," state television said, noting that the alert level had been raised in most of the country's 31 provinces from low-risk orange to high-risk red.

 This compares with roughly one death every three minutes about a month ago.

 Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in January banned the import of vaccines manufactured in the United States and Britain, saying they were unreliable and could exacerbate infections.

 Iran has blamed US sanctions for blocking the purchase and delivery of vaccines from other countries.

 New Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who publicly received his first dose of a homemade vaccine on Sunday, urged officials to speed up the pace of vaccination and use "all necessary means" to curb the pandemic, according to state media.

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