Covid-19: Iran exceeds 5,000 dead

Iran announced today that it has recorded 73 deaths in the last 24 motivated hours by the new coronavirus, bringing to more than 5. 000 the total number of deaths in the country most affected by the disease in the Middle East region.

The official balance increases the total number of deaths by covid - 19 to 5. 031, said the Ministry of Health spokesman, Kianouche Jahanpour, on state television.

According to official statistics, the number of new deaths caused by the new coronavirus is the lowest recorded and for the seventh consecutive day, pointing to a decrease in the spread and progression of the disease since the beginning of the month.

Iran recorded 1. 374 new cases of people infected in the last 24 hours, being the total number of confirmed cases of contamination of 80. 860. The country has since Friday allowed some businesses to resume activity in the capital, Tehran, and in neighboring cities, after several weeks in confinement.

Public services with a third of teleworkers were reopened and businesses operating outside the capital were allowed to reopen after several weeks in confinement.

Keeping the restrictions on public gatherings, the Government decreed that gyms, restaurants and shopping centers should remain closed, as well as the Grand Bazaar in Tehran, a historic market in the Iranian capital, as well as mosques and shrines. Iranian leaders justify the decision pointing to the economic consequences of the quarantine, aggravated by the sanctions imposed on the country by the United States of America (USA).

Health Ministry spokesman Kianouche Jahanpour, quoted by the France-Presse news agency, indicated, without providing details, that US sanctions against the Islamic Republic prevented Tehran from buying drug tests from South Korea, and considered "(Washington's) claims that the medical trade was not subject to sanctions to be false."

On Tuesday, a report by the Iranian Parliament Research Center noted that the actual number of deaths from the new coronavirus could be 80% higher than the figures announced by the government and the number of infections "eight to ten times" more.

Globally, the covid pandemic - 19 has already caused more than 154 thousand killed and infected more than 2.2 million people in 193 countries and territories. More than 497 thousand patients were considered cured.

In Portugal, 687 people from 19 died 685 ) registered as infected. The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.