May 20, 2022
by Warren L. Nelson
The coronavirus epidemic remains very low in Iran, with the death toll some days in May down to single digits and no sign yet of any post-Now Ruz surge.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Iran’s published death total was lower than reality but not so outrageously low as many critics of the Islamic Republic have said. In fact, WHO’s statistics showed Iran’s published Covid numbers were closer to reality than in most other countries.
A WHO study of “excess deaths” around the world estimated Iran’s death toll from Covid-19 as of December 31 at 232,153. That was 100,000 more than Iran’s published death toll as of that date of 131,606. But it was far, far below the figure of 497,000 published by the Mojahedin-e Khalq.
The WHO estimate for the death toll last December 31 in Britain was almost the same as the British government report. The WHO estimate for the US was 14 percent higher than the published US figure. The WHO number for Iran was 76 percent higher. But the WHO worldwide estimate was 172 percent higher than the published figures, so Iran was far better than most countries.
The more egregious countries included Pakistan, where the WHO estimates the true Covid death toll at eight times the government’s figures, India, where WHO says the death toll is 10 times higher, and Egypt, where WHO placed the death toll at 12 times higher than the government said.
Canada was the true outlier; its published death toll from Covid-19 at the end of last year was actually 27 percent lower than WHO estimated it to be!
The measure of “excess deaths” shows how many more people died during the epidemic than died in those same months before the epidemic.
In Iran, few people seem interested in getting vaccinated any longer. The number of shots averaged almost 1 million per day last October and November, then fell below a half million per day in December. By April, the daily average was just 60,000.
In part, that may reflect a belief that the epidemic is over. The daily number of reported cases was well over 30,000 in early February, but has been below 1,000 every day so far in May. The daily death toll, which was above 200 in late February, has been below 20 every day so far in May and in single digits on several days. The Health Ministry has long predicted a post-Now Ruz surge but no such surge has yet materialized.
There is no shortage of vaccines. As of early May, the Islamic Republic had imported 162 million doses of vaccine (more than 82 percent from China), but had administered only 150 million shots as of May 10. On top of that, millions of shots are being made in Iran, though the number seems to change depending on who is giving it. The Health Ministry said the volume of Iran-made doses passed 50 million on April 12.
Health Minister Bahram Eyenollahi said April 8 that Iran was exporting its domestically-made vaccines to 10 African countries, which he did not name, as well as to Nicaragua. But he did not say what Iran was charging. Nor did he explain why anyone was importing an Iranian vaccine given that WHO has not approved any of the six Iranian-made vaccines.
While the regime boasts almost daily about how it is producing a huge volume of locally-created vaccines, showing the world how skilled the Islamic Republic is, Dr. Rahim Sarami, chairman of the Health Ministry’s agency on medical technology, told a public seminar April 25 that the country has wasted huge sums funding so many labs working on vaccines. He said the government should have limited the effort to just two vaccine development centers. He said production was too high and that 18 million doses were in storage and about to expire.
Ehsan Bodaghi, writing in the Reformist daily Sharq, said, “There isn’t even domestic demand for the vaccines that were supposed to have long queues of foreign buyers and become our pride.”
Schools all across Iran fully resumed classes April 3, the first day after the Now Ruz holidays, although masks are required. Schools had begun to reopen back in September, with smaller and rural schools operating normally while larger schools generally brought students into the classroom just two or three days a week.
While most of the country is re-opening, Iran’s professional soccer league went the other way. On May 16, it ordered all league matches to be played in empty stadiums, saying Covid safety protocols were not being observed in most stadiums. Cynics, however, believed the new rule had nothing to do with the epidemic but to fears FIFA will ban Iran from the World Cup for refusing to admit women to stadiums.
Meanwhile, the Global Health Security (GHS) Index rated Iran as poorly equipped to handle future disease epidemics. The index rated Iran right in the middle of all the world’s countries at 90th place, but its score was only 36.5 out of a possible 100, which had it clustered with mainly poor African and Asian countries, though both Kuwait and Bahrain have scores close to Iran. Iran is tied with Uganda.
The 2021 GHS Index measures the capacities of 195 countries to prepare for epidemics and pandemics. The report says, “All countries remain dangerously unprepared for future epidemic and pandemic threats, including threats potentially more devastating than Covid-19.”
The GHS Index is a project of the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) (which, despite its name, deals with biological as well as nuclear threats) and the Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and was developed with Economist Impact, a division of the Economist magazine in London.
The four highest-scoring countries were the US (75.9), Australia (71.1), Finland (70.9) and Canada (69.8).
The four lowest-scoring counties were Syria (16.7), North Korea (16.1), Yemen (16.1) and Somalia (16.0). North Korea and Eritrea are the only two countries in the world that do not have any vaccination program.
