In the face of an ongoing third wave of Covid-19 infections, President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday delegated authority to provinces to reimpose lockdown measures and announced that violators of coronavirus-related protocols will be penalized.
In a televised speech during a meeting of National Coronavirus Taskforce, Rouhani said, “We are forced to intensify regulations and supervisions. For now, we will not support those who do not wear facemask,” President.ir reported.
Iran will launch a pilot scheme in the capital Tehran to penalize non-adherence to the mandatory facemask wearing order issued some two months ago.
“In this program, we will identify individuals who refuse to wear masks and determine how to treat them,” the president said, adding that the details of the penalty for such a disregard for the law will be hammered out by the end of the week.
If approved in next Saturday’s taskforce session, the stringent measure will be imposed in the capital within four or five days to give authorities time to inform the public of the new policy.
The initiative will expand to other major cities, if proven effective.
The taskforce, chaired by Rouhani, also authorized provincial governments to close down mosques, wedding halls, gyms, amusement parks, Friday prayers and seminaries for a one-week period, if deemed necessary.
National Coronavirus Taskforce will still have to give the green light to provinces to reintroduce restrictions.
Iran registered 3,204 confirmed cases of the deadly disease in a 24-hour period, pushing the total tally to 443,086, the spokeswoman of Health Ministry, Sima Sadat Lari, was quoted as saying by ISNA on Saturday.
The daily count of fatalities due to the outbreak reached 172, bringing the national toll to 25,394, Lari said.
Tehran in Crisis
Head of Tehran’s coronavirus taskforce, Alireza Zali, said they have submitted a request for a one-week return of lockdown disciplines in the province of Tehran.
According to the health official, 800 new patients were hospitalized in the capital within 24 hours, 125 of whom were placed in intensive care units.
Zali said the new circumstances of the disease in Tehran are still putting Tehran in a completely dangerous situation.
Over the past week, the death toll in Tehran has risen sharply, Zali said, calling for remote working for employees to curb the chances of virus transmission.
The official pointed out that the lifting of central Tehran’s restricted traffic zone did not have a significant impact on reducing the number of people who use the public transport system to move around the city.
Tehran’s public means of transport account for 25% of virus transmissions.
The capital’s taskforce will instead focus on other methods, such as remote working, to thin out the population in rush hours.
Iran has administered 3.9 million PCR tests to diagnose Covid-19. Over 372,000 have so far recovered from the infectious disease and 4,041 are in critical conditions.
Global coronavirus cases jumped to 32.8 million on Saturday and fatalities reached 995,000.
