Iran’s Government to Blame for Coronavirus Pandemic

Iran’s Government to Blame for Coronavirus Pandemic

Arrogance and deliberate inaction disabled Iran’s authorities from controlling the coronavirus epidemic when it first broke out. When the authorities first heard of the outbreak in China, they overconfidently claimed that coronavirus would not affect Iran. In fact, so immune was Iran to coronavirus that the government bragged that Iran would export face masks to china to help the troubled state (Fassihi & Kirkpatrick 2020). The officials stated that Iran’s health facilities were well-equipped to manage any health crisis, and did not take any extra preparedness measures for the health workers or the facilities. Iran was also motivated to maintain trade ties with China and did not cancel flights to the country, as noted by Mahan Air’s continued travels to China (Kangarlou & Hincks 2020). Worse still, the travelers were not screened, and the negligence, combined with unpreparedness, caused a high death toll of almost 1000 Iranians by mid-March (Kangarlou & Hincks 2020). Of note is, Iran now has the highest cases of coronavirus in Asia besides China. The government’s activities caused an uncontrollable spread of the disease.

Accordingly, because of unpreparedness, the health sector is overwhelmed by the patient number. The hospitals lack enough equipment and are still struggling to manage the coronavirus cases. Doctors lack protective gear, and the health facilities had more patients than they could manage (Shahla, Motevalli, & Champion 2020). Coronavirus patients would wait for an empty bed for two days, illustrating the pressure of public hospitals (Shahla et al. 2020). Testing facilities were not present until weeks since people reported symptoms of coronavirus, and this resulted in diagnosis errors and misinformation. Worse still, there is an acute shortage of health personnel as nurses and doctors have been infected with the disease. Mediation is also hard to obtain following the US sanctions, and scarce medicine has to be divided among many patients (Shahla et al. 2020). Taking proactive measures is also hard given that the government does not disclose the death toll and the extent of the epidemic. The inability to contain the disease has led to 3,036 deaths and 47,593 cases (“Iran’s official death toll” 2020). However, the number could be higher, and medics estimate that a million individuals could be at risk of being infected. Iranians are victims of a system that failed to take precautions, which could have prevented the acute spread of coronavirus.

Reference List

BBC News. 2020. Coronavirus: Iran’s official death toll passes 3,000. [Online] Available at: < https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52118809>. [Accessed 3 Apr 2020].

Fassihi, F., & Kirkpatrick, D. 2020. Iran’s Coronavirus Response: Pride, Paranoia, Secrecy, Chaos. New York Times. [Online] Available at: < https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/world/middleeast/coronavirus-iran.html>. [Accessed 3 Apr 2020].

Kangarlou, T. & Hincks, J. 2020. ‘People Are Dying Left and Right.’ Inside Iran’s Struggle to Contain Its Coronavirus Outbreak. Time Magazine. [Online] Available at: < https://time.com/5804706/iran-coronavirus/>. [Accessed 3 Apr 2020].

Shahla, A., Motevalli, G., & Champion, C. 2020. Coronavirus Ravages Iran All the Way to the Top. Bloomberg Businessweek. [Online] Available at: < https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-10/iran-s-hospitals-are-struggling-to-cope-with-coronavirus-surge>. [Accessed 3 Apr 2020].