Iran urges social distancing as coronavirus cases surge past 200,000
Iran has recorded confirmed coronavirus cases exceeding 200,000.
This was disclosed on Friday June19, 2020 as the government continued to caution people of the risk inherent in disregard to social distancing.
The Iranian government through the Health Ministry said it had recorded 120 deaths in 24 hours, taking the total cases to 9,392, and 2,615 new cases for a total of 200,262 cases.
As it stands, daily deaths in Iran have gone past 100 most of this week.
The state media reported several families are picnicking without masks or social distancing.
When reminded about how one person died every 12 to 15 minutes, a parent said, "My daughter was getting depressed. We really had to get out of the house".
Iran's parliamentary research centre in April suggested in a report that the actual number of coronavirus deaths might be almost double the official figure.
Still, even as the number of cases continues to grow each day, food markets were still packed with shoppers on Wednesday and highways were crowded with traffic as families travelled between cities to partake in the Persian New Year festival, Nowruz, on Friday 19 June, 2020.
Head of the Health Ministry's contagious disease care department, Hossein Erfani, said provinces would be allowed to decide locally whether to impose or suspend restrictions in the fight against the virus.
"Depending on whether it is high, medium or low risk, each province and county will decide on imposing necessary restrictions or suspending them," Erfani said.
The state said 6 of Iran's 31 provinces are currently high-risk coronavirus areas.
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