Daily Covid-19 Deaths, Infections Break Record

Both daily coronavirus infections and fatalities broke previous records on Tuesday, with Iran reporting 6,960 new infections and 346 deaths, the Health Ministry announced.
“The tally of daily deaths from the novel coronavirus topped the previous peak of 337 reported eight days ago, which pushed the total toll to 33,299,” the Health Ministry’s Spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari was quoted as saying by ISNA.
The 6,968 freshly identified cases broke Sunday’s record by 12%, taking the national tally to over 581,800, she added.
The health official noted that the upward trend of both infections and hospitalizations in almost all the country’s provinces have led to an “unprecedented rise in deaths” caused by SARS-CoV-2.
According to her, 694 hospitals across Iran are grappling with the contagion, which has taken up 26,960 beds in general wards and 5,900 ICU beds. 
Nearly 32% of all hospital beds in Iran are occupied by Covid-19 patients. 
President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday announced a shake-up in the National Coronavirus Taskforce, appointing Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli as head of operations.
Rahmani-Fazli’s job description includes a hands-on approach to the pandemic and supervision over the implementation of restrictive measures devised by the taskforce.
The president also assigned Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raeisi as the spokesman of National Coronavirus Taskforce and the single source for updates on the outbreak’s status.
Earlier this week, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei criticized inconsistencies in news coming out of the taskforce and called for the strict execution of proposals put forward by the Health Ministry.

Many Nurses Infected

Lari told a videoconference on Tuesday that 25% of Iran’s nurses have contracted Covid-19 since the start of the epidemic eight months ago.
“By October 6, some 3,160 nurses used sick leave for the two-week quarantine period,” she said, adding that 31,000 out of 133,000 nurses across the country have tested positive for the respiratory illness.
Iran has closed down all non-essential businesses in 43 red counties to ward off a third wave of infections.
The number of tests performed rose to 4.78 million on Tuesday. So far, 463,000 have recovered from the viral infection and 4,995 are in critical condition. 
The count of Covid-19 patients around the world neared 43.9 million and fatalities crossed 1.66 million.