Coronavirus in Iran: How bad is it?

Back on March 9th, The Atlantic put together a range on potential Iranians infected with COVID-19. The estimate the author targeted was 2 million. Note that this was on March 9th so if his analysis is true, then the figures would be much higher now. Though the following quote is on the lower end of the ranges provided in the article, I prefer this method as it looks at those who travel to other countries and are found to have the virus -- I just find it to indicate how unlucky someone is to be visiting a country and end up catching the virus:

A paper by the University of Toronto’s Ashleigh Tuite and others noted that, by February 23, cases of Iranian origin had surfaced in Canada, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates. Given the volume of air travel between Iran and these countries, Tuite’s team estimated how many native COVID-19 cases must have occurred in Iran to produce one case each in these other countries. Their estimate for February 23: 18,300. Since the epidemic reached 100 cumulative cases, the official numbers have doubled roughly every three days. If that rate held, the estimate as of today would be 586,000.


Deutsche Welle has some research from the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran that states in a best case scenario (quarantine, adequate medical supplies) that the death toll would be over 12,000. But then the article quickly states that this isn't a realistic scenario:

Accounting for those realities, the researchers estimate Iran will not reach the peak of the epidemic until late May, and they estimate as many as 3.5 million people could die as a result.

Iran's population is just over 81 million. We're talking an estimate of over 4% of the population dying from COVID-19.

The article then goes on to say that government officials just aren't on the same page (perhaps worse than that in the United States):

Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, has said he intends to bring the situation under control within 10 days; there had been rumors of curfews in Tehran. But on Sunday [President Hassan Rouhani] sought to dispel them by informing citizens that decisions such as imposing quarantine would be made by a crisis management group within his administration and not outside the government. However, as of yet Rouhani has neither declared a state of emergency nor attempted to put the capital on lockdown.

As mentioned by Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, a couple of reasons for the high death estimates are: no quarantines and a lack of medical supplies. Let's look into these two issues in a tangential way.

A quarantine order might not even work based on this report from Al-Monitor:

Yet with the epidemic showing no sign of abating, the Iranian authorities chose to impose a lockdown on the key religious sites, among them the highly revered shrines of Hazrat Masoumeh and Imam Reza in the conservative cities of Qom and Mashhad, respectively.

The controversial decision triggered furious reactions from some hard-liners, who saw it as an unforgivable insult to the “infallible” household of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. Videos quickly went viral from outside the two shrines, showing mobs breaking metal fences and storming the sites as they cursed those who ordered the closure.

The article states that the authorities were eventually able to close the sites, but this just indicates that even obvious government moves to curtail the spread of the virus could hit resistance. The below is another example of how government attempts are being ignored.

The Guardian reported about the Persian New Year that just occurred:

Pleas by the Iranian government for citizens to stay at home at the start of the country’s new year have been widely ignored, with more than 1.2 million people taking to the roads, according to police.

Northern towns on the Caspian coast reported tens of thousands of cars trying to reach the main holiday destinations.

I would think that as soon as Iranians return from their holiday vacations that Iran will start locking down the country.

In the United States, there are some who don't want the US government to allow medicine sales to Iran. The Intercept looks into this:

Despite a massive coronavirus-related public health crisis, an anti-Iran pressure group with close ties to the Trump administration is urging major pharmaceutical companies to “end their Iran business,” focusing on companies with special licenses — most often under a broadly defined “humanitarian exemption” — to conduct trade with Iran.

With a novel strain of coronavirus rapidly spreading around the world, Iran has been hit particularly hard, with 107 deaths and 3,515 infections recorded so far. Yet the pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran, is carrying on with its campaign targeting medical trade with Iran despite the Trump administration’s special financial channels for humanitarian goods and medicine to reach the beleaguered country. 

This really, if true, is immoral behavior. Also, just think about it, if this really does cause millions of infections in Iran there is no way it doesn't cause infections in neighboring countries and then beyond. You can close the borders, but you'll never prevent people from sneaking across borders just like the United States will never totally secure the southern border.