New Covid Wave Could Hit Iran 

Iran is on the lookout for a fresh wave of Covid-19 pandemic as the head of the Health Ministry’s Center for Infectious Disease Control, Shahnam Arshi, warned that another surge was likely. 
“Right now, we are concerned and we’re waiting for a possible fresh wave of the disease,” Arshi was quoted as saying by ISNA on Saturday. 
The Iranian government has loosened coronavirus-related restrictions and advocated a return to normalcy for the past months to revive its economy following the vaccination of a large portion of the population. 
“It’s been nearly two months since we’ve had a Covid wave or significant number of infections,” Arshi said. 
The health official pointed to the spikes in Covid cases in the United States, Europe, and certain Asian nations such as Japan and China in the past two months and said, “Covid has not ended anywhere in the globe.”
Arshi expressed concern over international travel near Christmas but noted that a new peak might not be as severe as the previous waves. 
He advised Iranians to wear facemasks in crowded places and observe health protocols to prevent transmission rates from going up. 
The new rise in coronavirus cases, especially in China, with its population of 1.4 billion, has caused distress in the rest of the world as the virus can travel fast to other countries. 
New iterations of Omicron, namely the BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, are circulating in the United States and have overtaken the BA.5 as the new dominant subvariants. 
Despite the worldwide surge, Iran’s coronavirus figures have remained relatively low in the past months. Some suggest that a lack of testing is responsible for the low count and a new peak could be imminent. 

Weekly Update 

A new weekly update released by the Health Ministry on Saturday stated that 359 more coronavirus patients had been identified throughout the country over the past eight days. 
According to the statement, 14 patients had lost their lives to the virus in the same time period. 
Overall, more than 7.56 million Iranians have caught the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic and more than 144,670 have died from it. 
Over 155.1 million vaccine doses have been administered to more than 85 million Iranians. 
Around the world, at least 661.3 million have been infected with the contagion and 6.6 million deaths have been linked to the respiratory disease.