TEHRAN – The World Health Organization (WHO) has so far announced clinical trials of only 12 countries, including Iran, with scientific and high-level research capabilities that can be cited worldwide, head of Tehran coronavirus control committee has said.

In Tehran alone, 125 clinical trials with research and high scientific standards are underway, ISNA quoted Alireza Zali as saying on Wednesday.

So far, 640 new research projects in the field of COVID-19 are being carried out at medical universities, and for some time now, due to special global conditions, global webinars are being formed, most of which have been between Iranian experts and European or North American physicians, he explained.

In all of these joint webinars, countries were amazed at our ways of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention; today, we can export the best practices in the field of medicine, he added.

Medicine such as chloroquine was used to treat coronavirus in the early days of the outbreak in Iran, and only 40 days later did political officials in other countries refer to it as an effective drug, he stated.

Today, we have the highest level of expertise in respiratory care and the use of non-invasive artificial ventilation devices, he said, noting, we are proud to have the highest number of spinal and orthopedic surgeries in the world at the time of the epidemic.

“We treated coronavirus patients who did not even have a companion, and fortunately the medical community has done the best ever,” he emphasized.

In Tehran, we are facing an increase in the waste generation since the onset of the epidemic, and perhaps the lesser-known staff who played an important role are municipal waste workers, whose work has increased 8-10 times during this period, he concluded.

Last week, deputy health minister Reza Malekzadeh said that Iranian researchers have so far conducted over 1,200 projects related to coronavirus, ranking the country third in terms of scientific findings on coronavirus in the world.

By implementing research and development projects on coronavirus, we will offer excellent scientific products shortly on the international scale, he added.

Health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said on Wednesday that the total number of people diagnosed with the coronavirus has reached 101.650 of whom 6,418 have lost their lives.

However, 81,587 patients have recovered from the disease. During the past 24 hours, some 1,680 new cases have been identified in the country.

FB/MG