TEHRAN - "One billion dollars will be injected into the country's healthcare system by the National Development Fund," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said at a government economic committee meeting on Thursday.

By recruiting 10,000 new nurses there will be no shortage of nurses to take care of corona patients and now nurses can serve in shifts, Rouhani stated.

The president added severe regulations are now in place for social distancing so that "we can break the corona chain until April 8 in the country".

He also said businesses which have suffered from the disease will be granted 6,000 billion tomans  ($1.42 billion) in credits.

"The other decision was to help businesses that has been hurt and provide them with inexpensive facilities if they did not fire workers." 

"In total, we have allocated 75,000 billion tomans ($17.8 billion) in bank credits at a 12 percent interest rate and we are going to contribute 5,000 billion tomans ($1.190 billion) to the Unemployment Insurance Fund."

The calculus is based on the fixed rate of 4,200 tomans per dollar.

EM/PA