Iran Mobilizes 300,000 to Contain Coronavirus

Date: 02 March 2020 - 22:13

News ID: ۷۶۷۹۵

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran deployed drones to disinfect streets and mobilized tens of thousands of teams to conduct door-to-door coronavirus checks across the country.
The health ministry said global statistics show Iran ranks second in the world after China in terms of the number of people who have recovered from the novel coronavirus.
As of Monday, 175 patients had recovered from the COVID-19 and been discharged from hospital, according to the ministry.
Iran has been battling against the coronavirus since February 19 when the first cases of infections were confirmed by the country’s officials.
The death toll from the epidemic in Iran has risen to 54, and the total number of confirmed cases of infection has reached 978, according to the Health Ministry spokesman.
Amid draconian U.S. sanctions, Iranian experts have developed test kits which the country will mass-produce in the coming days.
The death toll ticked higher on Monday, with the health ministry raising the number of fatalities to 66, up from 54 a day earlier. The number of confirmed cases rose 53% to 1,501.
Iran’s foreign ministry said Tehran does not count on the United States for help in its battle against the coronavirus because it does not trust Washington’s alleged offer of assistance.
President Donald Trump said on Saturday the U.S. was willing to help the Iranians with the problem, adding "all they have to do is ask,” just after he authorized the expansion of travel restrictions against Iran.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said Monday, "We have had doubts and continue to have doubts about the intentions of Americans. If they had good intentions, they would not have publicized the aid first in the media with propagandist aims.”
The United States, which has had no diplomatic ties with Iran since 1980, pulled out of a landmark nuclear deal with the country and reimposed crippling sanctions in 2018.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday detailed Trump’s heightened travel bans against Iranians in a press conference from the White House.
"First, the president authorized action today to add additional travel restrictions on Iran. … Iran is already under a travel ban, but we’re are expanding existing travel restrictions to include any foreign national who has visited Iran within the last 14 days,” Pence said.
Mousavi said, "We monitor the Americans’ positions. We have already seen how much they acted against Iran and our capabilities and toward weakening the people, and those actions still continue.”
"We doubt the intentions of Americans, and do not count on these aids and are not ready to receive verbal aid either,” he added.
The U.S. State Department said Friday it had formally told Iran of the United States’ willingness to assist in unspecified ways through a message sent via Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Tehran.
Mousavi touched on a Swiss channel announced in December to bring food and medicine to Iran, saying the U.S. government has even been stonewalling efforts to have it up and running.
The spokesman said most of Iran’s

needs to contain the coranavirus and treat patients exist in the country, but that its friends have also announced their readiness to help the Islamic Republic.
"Turkey, China and the Red Cross have helped us. Some countries in the region have also said they are ready to cooperate,” he said.
The UAE deployed an aircraft that carried 7.5 tonnes of cargo provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) from Dubai to Iran on Monday afternoon.
The shipment contained hundreds of thousands of gloves, surgical masks, and other basic medical supplies, that could assist some 15,000 healthcare workers taking care of coronavirus patients in Iran.
Laboratory diagnostic kits in the cargo will help screen thousands of people, further supporting the efforts to control the pandemic.
Mousavi, however, reserved his special thanks for China. "The Chinese government has fully stood by the Iranian people and sent several medical shipments to Iran.”
China also sent a scientific team for research on finding a vaccine for the coronavirus and to transfer their latest findings to their Iranian peers, he added.
"This is a good example of international cooperation. If all fulfill their obligations with this seriousness and goodwill, we will definitely have a better world,” Mousavi said.
The spokesman appealed to Iranians to maintain their high spirit and help contain the malaise so that these outlets cannot take advantage of the situation.
Several television channels, chiefly based in Europe, broadcast programs in Persian with the funding of British and Saudi governments as well as former Iranian monarchists.
Some of their broadcasts have been aimed at disrupting Iran’s financial market and stoking riots across the country. Last week, BBC Persian Television claimed that the coronavirus had killed more than 200 people in Iran.
Health Ministry spokesman Ali Reza Raisi said that Iran’s armed forces and its Basij, the all-volunteer arm of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, stood ready to mobilize 300,000 troops to help combat the virus. Already, IRGC vehicles have been spraying disinfectant on streets in major cities.
Those troops would help sanitizing public areas, as well as running down leads on who infected people had contacted before falling ill, Raisi said.
Trying to stem the outbreak of the new coronavirus, Iran also on Monday held an online-only briefing by its Foreign Ministry. China as well has held similar teleconference briefings.
Judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi acknowledged some people had begun stockpiling medical supplies for profit in the country, urging prosecutors to show "no mercy for hoarders.”
"Hoarding sanitizing data-x-items is playing with people’s lives and it is not ignorable,” Raisi said. He also urged officials to grant "maximum” leave to prisoners.