Tehran (AFP)

Tehran announced on Monday that the new coronavirus is now affecting more than 40,000 people and has killed 2,757 people in Iran, where authorities say they will prepare to fight the epidemic at least until early summer.

The Islamic Republic is one of the countries most affected by the pandemic. It announced on February 19 the first cases of contamination on its soil, but a senior official recently admitted that the virus was probably already present in Iran in January.

According to daily data released by the authorities, Covid-19 disease has killed 117 more people in the past 24 hours, and Iran has officially confirmed a total of 41,495 cases of contamination.

The country currently has 3,511 patients in a "critical" state and, to date, 13,911 patients have recovered following their hospitalization, added the Ministry of Health.

While abroad some question the figures published by the Iranian authorities, which they suspect to be underestimated, a senior official published a government study according to which the disease should kill 11,000 dead in Iran in the current state of measures taken by the authorities.

The study shows that the country will still continue to fight against the virus "at the beginning of the summer," wrote on his Instagram account this official, Parviz Karami, spokesman for the vice president in charge of Science, Sorena Sattari.

- "The opinion of the experts" -

After doing everything to avoid imposing containment or quarantine measures, the government decided on March 25 to ban all travel between cities. The measure came into effect two days later, is to apply until April 8, and could be extended.

Without being officially confined, residents have been called for several weeks to stay at home "as much as possible".

According to the semi-official agency Isna, the head of the judicial authority Ebrahim Raïssi estimated that the new coronavirus "could have been mastered more quickly if the opinion of experts from the Ministry of Health on the implementation of the measures of social distancing and social restrictions had been taken into account earlier. "

Ultra-conservative, Mr. Raïssi was the unfortunate rival of President Hassan Rohani during the last presidential election, in 2017.

According to his remarks reported by Isna, Mr. Raïssi criticizes the government for having delayed showing its determination to fight against the spread of the virus, which has resulted in slower "cooperation" of the population.

Another ultra-conservative Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a former mayor of Tehran who was elected a member of parliament in February and a favorite to become the next speaker, on Twitter also accused the government of being "ineffective", "unduly optimistic" and "aggravate the crises".

The executive reacted "once it has been notified" of the epidemic and tried "to create an environment in which the necessary physical distance between individuals is maintained and people's lives are not disturbed", replied government spokesman Ali Rabii on state television.

- Stem cells -

"In an economy under sanctions, it is desirable to combine these two factors," he added.

For several weeks, Iranian diplomacy has been active in asking the world to stop accepting to comply with Washington's unilateral sanctions, which are suffocating Iran's economy and making the importation of drugs or medical supplies practically impossible.

The government has announced these days that it plans to spend 1,000 billion rials (5.5 billion euros at today's exchange rate) against the coronavirus, or about 20% of the state budget envisaged for the current Iranian year (started March 20).

This amount includes the cost of the crisis for the health sector, but also measures to support businesses, such as loans at preferential rates, and to the less privileged classes of the population, in the form of allowances.

Isna says some state-of-the-art hospitals are experimenting with stem cell therapy for the disease

State television also announced that the country had started mass production of screening kits with "extremely accurate" results in three hours.

© 2020 AFP