Tehran Sees Uptick in Covid-19 Outpatients

The number of Covid-19 outpatients in the capital of Tehran has increased by 1% compared to the previous week, signaling the resurgence of the disease in coming weeks, the head of the city’s coronavirus taskforce said.
Alireza Zali on Monday also warned that the tally of outpatients is “slowly” rising, IRNA reported.
“Over 80% of outpatients in Tehran visit private clinics. For this reason, they might not be included in our statistics,” the official said, pointing out that the actual numbers could be significantly higher. 
According to Zali, many clues are signaling the imminent resurgence of the viral infection, from adherence to social distancing dropping to 74% to the number of metro passengers crossing one million a day.
Zali said that over the past week, intercity travel spiked by 24%, which is extremely concerning.
Tehran’s Governor General Mohsen Anoushirvan Bandpey also noted that the province is currently color-coded as yellow, but it is moving toward orange, which is one step away from the highest alert level red. 
“Due to population density and the overcrowded public transport system, Tehran’s color code should always be considered one level higher [than the official classification],” Bandpey said.
Iran has established a color-code system to categorize cities based on transmission rates, with the lowest-risk regions coded as blue and the highest-risk parts of the country classified as red.
“The Health Ministry reported 98 fatalities caused by Covid-19 on Monday, bringing the national toll to 57,480,” the spokeswoman for the ministry, Sima Sadat Lari, said.
“Some 6,309 new coronavirus patients were identified within one day and 681 were admitted to hospitals,” the health official said, adding that the total tally of cases rose to 1.379 million. 
Lari noted that 1.17 million have recovered from the infectious disease and 4,057 are in serious condition. 
She said Iran has so far carried out 8.96 million diagnostic tests. 
Countries around the world have registered a total of 99.8 million coronavirus cases and over 2.14 million fatalities.