120 Cities on Red Covid Alert 

The number of cities on coronavirus red alert more than doubled in a span of one week, from 57 to now 120 as highly contagious variants of the original virus circulate throughout the country. 
Cities coded as orange or high-risk also saw a surge from last week’s 86 to 112 on Friday, ISNA reported data collected by the Health Ministry. 
Fueled by Omicron sub-variant BA.5, Iran has entered the seventh wave of the pandemic over the past month with hospitalizations and outpatients once again climbing. 
The rise in infection rates is finally showing its effect on the national death toll. On Saturday, the Health Ministry registered 46 deaths, a dramatic increase compared to one-digit mortalities reported in early July. 
Health experts had warned that it would take two to three weeks for the spike in active cases to impact the daily death rate. 
The government has relaunched the vaccination campaign in the hope of further boosting immunity in the country’s population of 85 million people. 
Some 20% of those eligible to get vaccinated against Covid have refused to do so and just over 30 million have received booster shots against the contagion.