Iran, under sanctions, tests 33 MILLION for coronavirus

This is what a country under crippling sanctions can achieve while western countries seem incapable of testing at all.

Iran tests 33 million people 

for coronavirus

Middle East Monitor,

23 March, 2020

Iran’s Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education announced on Sunday that his medical teams have tested 33 million people for coronavirus. Saeed Namaki told journalists in Tehran that 40,000 members of the ministry’s medical staff were involved in the process.

Around 145,000 people are currently in quarantine in medical facilities and their homes, he added. The situation has improved compared with the first days of the pandemic, explained the minister, but that does not mean that travel and movement are possible yet.

He went on to point out that about 60 per cent of the population in Iran are in self-isolation in compliance with the government’s recommendations.

On Saturday, the Iranian Health Ministry announced that 20,610 people were infected with the virus, and 1,556 have died.

READ: Khamenei rejects US offer of help in battle against coronavirus 

Khamenei: US Accused of Creating Coronavirus, It Would Be Unreasonable to Accept Assistance from It

MEMRI

On March 22, 2020, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a 40-minute-long speech, which aired on Channel 1 (Iran) and posted on Khamenei’s website. 

The Iranian leader said that America is Iran's most evil enemy and that top American officials are charlatans, greedy, insolent liars, and merciless terrorists. 

He said that America's offers to help Iran with treatment and medicine are strange because America itself has equipment shortages, and he elaborated that no Iranian would accept these offers anyway because America has been accused of manufacturing and spreading COVID-19. 

Khamenei said that he does not know if these accusations are true, but that if they are, American medicine might be a means to further spread the disease in Iran and the American doctors who would come to Iran might do so in order to gather more information about the behavior of the virus in order to increase America's hostility towards Iran. 

In addition, he referred to a theory that strains of COVID-19 were produced specifically to target Iran using information gathered about Iranian genetics