TEHRAN – Some 61 million people across the country have been screened for Covid-19 infection under the national plan named after martyr Qassem Soleimani, ISNA reported on Monday.

Aimed at cutting the transmission chain of the disease, the plan is being implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Health, Basij, and the Red Crescent Society, through which volunteer forces provide information, testing, diagnosis, referral of suspects to health centers, and offer services by visiting people’s homes.

Over 4 million health ambassadors are cooperating in the Soleimani plan, which has played an effective role in coronavirus control, Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij Organization said.

“We decide to plan an eradication phase in cooperation with the Ministry of Health, and we hope to implement this phase by April and May so that the disease is completely eradicated in the country,” he stated.

Some 22,530 monitoring teams have been formed within the framework of the plan since December 15, 2020, with 103,000 members, of which more than 270,000 are in contact to identify COVID-19 patients, said Jafar Sadeq-Tabrizi, head of the Network Management Center of the Ministry of Health said on December 15, 2020.

Some 6,730 home care teams have been formed in the country with the participation of 18,000 forces, who have taken care of 41,000 people at home, and rapid result tests have been performed on 7,500 suspects, he explained.

So far, with the participation of 61,000 people, more than 10,000 monitoring teams have been formed. About 782,000 visits and monitoring of various places and centers have been done to warn those who do not observe the health protocols, Sadeq-Tabrizi stated.

Daily new cases and mortalities on a declining trend 

In a press briefing on Monday, Health Ministry’s spokesperson Sima-Sadat Lari confirmed 6,309 new cases of COVID-19 infection, raising the total number of infections to 1,379,286. She added that 1,171,070 patients have so far recovered, but 4,057 remain in critical conditions of the disease.

During the past 24 hours, 89 patients have lost their lives, bringing the total number of deaths to 57,481, she added.

So far, 8,960,186 COVID-19 diagnostic tests have been performed in the country.

Lari noted that currently, 18 cities are in medium-risk “orange” zones, and 154 in low-risk “yellow” zones.

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