TEHRAN – Traffic-related accidents and mortalities have decreased by 50 percent over the first three months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-June 20) compared to the same period last year due to the outbreak of coronavirus which has slashed travels across the country.

“Of course, this is not a proper indicator, and we need to look at the real causes of the country's road crashes, but with the onset of the outbreak the mortality rate of car crashes halved,” said Mohammad Esmaeil Motlaq, head of the disaster risk management department of the Ministry of Health.

In fact, if the pandemic did not infect the people, there would have been an increasing trend in road crashes and deaths this year, he stated, IRNA reported.

He went on to say that in the first two months of this year, 1,973 people lost their lives in traffic accidents, of whom 1,636 were men and 337 were women which shows a declining trend of 23.4 percent compared to the same period last year with a death toll of 2,575 people.

Also, 35,869 people were injured in traffic accidents during the aforesaid period, of which 27,291 were men and 8,578 were women, which was reported 58,377 in the first two months of last year, thus traffic accidents in the first two months of this year compared to the same period last year decreased by 38.6 percent, he explained.

The highest number of traffic accident deaths in the first two months of this year was related to Tehran with 163 people, Fars with 149 and Kerman with 148, and the lowest was related to Ilam and Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari with 19 each and Kohgiluyeh-Boyerahmad with 21, he stated.

According to the statistics of the Forensic Medicine Organization, provinces of Markazi with 41.8 percent, Ilam with 35.7 percent, and Qom with 18.9 percent experienced the highest increase in traffic-related deaths in two months this year in comparison to the same period last year, while provinces of West Azarbaijan with 45.5 percent, Khorasan Razavi with 44.9 percent, and Gilan with 44.8 percent, had the highest reduction.

Also during this period, out of the total casualties of accidents, 1,274 people lost their lives on suburban roads, 568 people on urban roads, 118 people on rural roads, and 13 people on other roads, he concluded.

The number of daily COVID-19 mortalities in the country reached 188 and the total number of deaths reached 12,635, Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari said on Saturday.

Over the past 24 hours, 2,397 new cases of COVID-19 were identified in the country, of which 1,739 were hospitalized, she stated, adding, the total number of patients in the country reached 255,117.

Currently, 3,338 patients with coronavirus are in critical condition. While 217,666 patients have recovered or been discharged from hospitals.

So far, 1,947,114 tests have been performed to diagnose COVID-19 in the country.

FB/MG