Covid-Related Hospital Visits Drop 

Covid-19 outpatient visits and hospitalizations have been on the decline in the past few days throughout the country, head of the national science committee against the coronavirus, Saeed Karimi, said. 
“We hope this trend continues and we return to zero Covid days,” he was quoted as saying by IRNA. 
Since the early days of summer, Iran has been hit by a seventh wave of the pandemic as the highly contagious BA.5 variant became dominant in the country. 
Karimi’s remarks are reflected in the daily number of Covid cases reported on Tuesday by the Health Ministry. 
The ministry logged only 2,340 new active cases on Tuesday, dramatically down from the more than 10,000 daily infections registered around two weeks ago. 
The virus on the same day took the lives of 49 patients, bringing the national toll to 142,564.
Iran has relaunched the Covid vaccination campaign in an effort to boost immunity in its population and encourage the unvaccinated to get inoculated as soon as possible, according to Karimi.
At least 130 cities have been placed on red alert and some 129 are color-coded as orange, standing for high-risk zones.