Tehran (AFP)

Museums in Tehran and major cities in Iran reopened on Sunday after more than a year of virtual closure due to Covid-19, a senior Iranian official told AFP.

"Museums in Tehran and other major cities in the country, which are no longer in the red zone, that is to say where the risk of contacting the virus is lower, reopened on Sunday. Tourists and visitors alike are invited to go there by observing the "sanitary security measures", explained the director of the country's museums, Mohammad-Réza Kargar.

"We are absolutely delighted and I think people are too because they were tired of staying at home during the pandemic, and visiting museums improves their mood," he said, in an interview with the 'AFP in its office of the Ministry of Tourism and Heritage, in the south of Tehran.

"Our colleagues were really tired of not seeing visitors. We have sanitary protocols, of course, and the number of visitors will be based on the space of our sites so that the public stays safe," he said. -he says.

From May 2020 and for 14 months, apart from a few brief and episodic openings, the doors of the museums remained closed, recalled the director.

Only students, researchers and museum staff were allowed to enter their compound.

The director of Iran's museums, Mohammad-Réza Kargar, during an interview with AFP, in Tehran, September 19, 2021 ATTA KENARE AFP

Heir to a very ancient civilization, Iran has 746 museums, including 170 in Tehran, and had welcomed 21.7 million visitors, including two million foreigners, the year before the coronavirus pandemic, in 2019.

"I do not think that we can reach this figure quickly because the health situation in the world is not good either. We hope that with the health standardization of the whole country, we can return to the previous position," he said. judged Mr. Kargar.

On Sunday, despite its reopening, the National Museum of Iran in Tehran was still empty.

"We have to wait for the news to spread and the schools to reopen so that people are flocking again," Firouzeh Sepidnameh, head of the pre-Islamic collections department of the Museum of Fabulous Treasures from the Age of the Age, told AFP. bronze and iron until the Medes, Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian and Sassanid times.

Iran is the country most affected by the pandemic in the Near and Middle East.

The country has thus counted more than 5 million cases of infections and 117,182 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Health published on Sunday.

The National Museum of Iran, in Tehran, September 19, 2021 ATTA KENARE AFP

So far, some 29.4 million people have received a first dose and 13.9 million people have been fully immunized.

The Ministry of Health announced that the vaccination of 12-18 year olds would start on Monday.

Iran has administered a total of 43 million doses since February.

© 2021 AFP