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MPs receiving treatment for coronavirus in a hos-
pital. He has close links to Salami’s IRGC. “Many of
the officials travel to Qom, and they go there fre-
quently,” says a person close to the government
who asked not to be identified.
Senior conservative clerics are making unusual
on-camera statements, urging the faithful not to
kiss or lick religious shrines. But not everyone lis-
tens. In one clip posted on Twitter in late February,
a young man warned against frightening the pub-
lic with scare stories, then made a show of kissing
Shiism’s second holiest shrine, in Qom.
Many hospitals in Iran have been designated
entirely to treating coronavirus patients. Six of 14
Tehran hospitals contacted by Bloomberg News
on March 6 said that they were full and that new
patients either would have to wait, or that they
wouldn’t be admitted at all. “We have 14 patients
in the emergency ward who have been waiting for
an empty bed for two days now,” said an admin-
istrator at Torfeh Hospital in downtown Tehran.
A doctor in Gilan province says patients with
coronavirus-type symptoms were coming to local
hospitals two weeks before the government pub-
licized the first Iranian case, in Qom, on Feb. 19.
Chest scans showed signs of an unusually vir-
ulent pneumonia, “but nobody was taking it
seriously,” says the doctor, who asked not to be
named. It took until March for the province to get
its own testing facilities, the doctor says. Before
that, tests had to be sent to Tehran, causing delays
and errors.
With some doctors and nurses infected, med-
ical personnel are in short supply, as are protec-
tive equipment and disinfectants, according to
the doctor. Medicine is scarce, too, at least in part
because of sanctions that the U.S. reimposed after
President Trump withdrew from a multilateral
2015 deal that limited Iran’s nuclear fuel pro-
gram. “Divvying up a small amount of medicineamong a large number of patients is a daily head-
ache,” says the doctor, who estimates that 10 to 12
Covid-19 patients a day on average die at the hos-
pital. “We had 18 to 20 deaths in one day alone,
and some of the deceased are tested only after
they die, to determine burial procedures.” A hos-
pital official said it could not confirm the number
of deaths from coronavirus.
Many in Tehran are staying home, venturing out
only to buy essentials. In the runup to the Iranian
New Year on March 20, stores in Tehran would nor-
mally be jammed, but many—especially those offer-
ing luxury goods—are empty. “We’ve been caught in
the crossfire,” says Majid, a 42-year-old driver for the
Iranian ride-hailing service Snapp, who would only
give his first name. “On the one side, our incompe-
tent officials have failed to contain the virus. They
opened the gates to flights from China as if corona
was a joke. On the other side, they have raised the
price of gasoline and advised people to stay inside.”● Can Iranians trust their
government again?The government’s response has been inconsis-
tent. It blocked roads to provinces with high infec-
tion rates, such as Gilan and Mazandaran on the
Caspian Sea north of Tehran, and schools have
been closed. But no cities are locked down, and
employees in government offices and state organi-
zations were working on a normal schedule as of
March 7. At the same time, a deputy health minister
made a televised plea for people to stay at home:
“We have 140,000 beds across all hospitals in the
country, but we may have to add new beds by 10
times that number if people don’t observe health
measures,” he said on March 6.
With Iranians sequestering themselves at home,
state TV channels are airing dubbed foreign films,
including the Lord of the Rings and Toy Story series,▲ Masks dominate at a
mosque