TEHRAN – As the COVID-19 pandemic is ravaging the whole country, fifty-six hospitals belonging to the armed forces have been equipped to exclusively admit patients infected with the coronavirus.

Hassan Araqizadeh, the head of the healthcare department of the General Headquarters of the Armed Forces, told IRIB on Thursday that the department is ready to establish field hospitals at every place, even at border points.

“Some 70 percent of the beds of the hospitals of the Armed Forces had been allocated to COVID-19 patients, but we are ready to boost the capacities,” he said.

Iran registered unprecedented 4,142 new cases of coronavirus over the past 24 hours. 

During the past 24 hours, 210 patients have lost their lives, bringing the total number of deaths to 28,098, Health Ministry spokesperson Sima-Sadat Lari said on Friday, adding that the total number of infections rose to 492,378.

She added that 401,379 patients have so far recovered, but 4,392 remain in critical conditions of the disease.

Lari noted that so far 4,257,766 COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country.

She said the high-risk “red” zones include provinces of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, East Azarbaijan, South Khorasan, Semnan, Qazvin, Lorestan, Ardebil, Khuzestan, Kermanshah, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Gilan, Bushehr, Zanjan, Ilam, Khorasan Razavi, Mazandaran, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Alborz, West Azarbaijan, Markazi, Kerman, North Khorasan, Hamedan, and Yazd.

The provinces of Kordestan, Hormozgan, Fars, and Golestan are also on alert.

Face masks mandatory 

As of today, the use of face masks will be mandatory in Tehran province and the implementation of this law will be closely monitored.
Accordingly, restrictions were imposed on educational classes, recreational places, sports halls, gardens, museums, and gatherings that increase the chain of transmission, as well as Friday prayers.

Medical terrorism

Tehran has described the U.S. sanctions as “economic terrorism” and “medical terrorism” on various occasions, citing the high number of deaths as a direct result of the illegal sanctions.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has accused the United States of impeding Iran’s ability to fight the coronavirus outbreak, saying that U.S. sanctions have prevented the purchase of critical medical supplies.

“We need to jointly confront the destructive impact of unilateral coercive measures on efforts to combat the pandemic,” Zarif told the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) on September 27.

“They are nothing but economic and medical terrorism, and we must refuse to comply with these unlawful measures in our collective endeavor to tackle this common affliction of humanity,” he added.