TEHRAN Iran announced its highest single-day death toll from the coronavirus with 251 confirmed dead, the same day that two senior officers have been confirmed infected and the nation’s foreign money hit a record low.
Health Ministry spokesperson Sima Sadat Lari mentioned the total confirmed death toll now stands at 28,544, making it the hardest-hit country within the area. Iran had previously recorded its highest each day death toll four days earlier, with 239 new fatalities.
An additional 3,822 new cases have been confirmed over the previous 24 hour-period, raising recorded nationwide cases to 500,075. Almost 4,500 patients are in vital situations.
Among these recently infected is the top of the nation’s atomic energy organization, the newest senior official to test positive for the virus.
The semiofficial Tasnim news company mentioned Ali Akbar Salehi, a V.P. of Iran, had confirmed positive for the virus last week and has been in home quarantine since. The news company reported that his health situation is presently OK.
In the meantime, a separate report by Tasnim news company mentioned the nation’s V.P. in charge of budget and planning, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, had additionally tested positive for the COVID-19.
Iran has struggled from the beginning to contain the spread of the virus throughout this nation of 80 million people, initially beating it again only to see a spike in cases also, starting in June. The government has mostly resisted previously imposing wide-scale lockdowns because the economy teeters from continued U.S. financial sanctions that effectively bar Iran from selling its oil internationally.
Cash trade retailers in Tehran sold the U.S. greenback at 315,000 rials on Sunday compared to what was 32,000 rials to the greenback in 2015 Iran’s nuclear deal with other world powers. Salehi was known internationally as one of the key Iranian negotiators who was a part of all those nuclear talks. The deal curbed Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions aid. However, President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the settlement in 2018 and re-imposed crushing financial sanctions.
The currency plummeted further on Sunday, days after the Trump administration’s decision to blacklist 18 Iranian banks that had so far escaped the majority of re-imposed sanctions. The transfer subjects non-Iranian financial institutions to penalties for doing business with them, effectively cutting the banks off from the international financial system.
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Iran has seen several top officials contract the virus over past months, including senior Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri and Vice President Massoumeh Ebtekar. Numerous Cabinet ministers have additionally tested positive, including Tourism Minister Ali Asghar Mounesan and the former Industry Minister Reza Rahmani. The head of an Iranian government task force on the coronavirus who had urged the general public to not overreact about its spread was among the first senior officials to contract the virus in late February.
The virus first appeared in Iran at a similar time. The government was trying to shore up the assist for the country’s parliamentary elections, which noticed the lowest voter turnout because the 1979 Islamic Revolution brought its clerical leadership to power.
