◼ COVID-19 / GOVERNMENT Bloomberg Businessweek March 16, 202022
Why was Iran hit
so hard?
○ Iran is dealing with one of the world’s worst
outbreaks of the new coronavirus, and the dis-
ease was quick to reach the top ranks of the gov-
ernment. Four current and former Iranian officials
have died so far from coronavirus: a member of
the Expediency Council that advises 80-year-old
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; an aide
and mentor to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad
Zarif; a former ambassador to the Vatican; and a
newly elected member of parliament. Iraj Harirchi,
the deputy health minister in charge of the coun-
try’s coronavirus task force, has it himself, as does
the head of Iran’s medical services. Vice President
Masoumeh Ebtekar, once spokeswoman for the
revolutionaries who took 52 Americans hostage at
the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, says she’s sick
with the virus, too. ● How did the virus reach Tehran?
Major General Hossein Salami, the head of Iran’s
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),
announced the likely culprit at a military cer-
emony in Kerman province on March 5: a U.S.biological attack, first on China and then on Iran.
Salami’s lashing out at foreign enemies underlines
the sense of bewilderment in Iran as to why the
disease has struck the country so hard. According
to Iranian government statistics, as of March 11
there were 9,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, as
the disease from the virus is called, and 354 deaths
across the nation of 84 million. The coronavirus
seems to have shot up northern Iran’s highway
artery from Qom, a major religious center, to the
capital of Tehran, which is now the country’s
most affected city. Despite its being the source of
the earliest cases in Iran, Qom was never placed
under quarantine—a stark contrast to containment
measures taken in China and in Italy, the worst-
hit European nation. (Following Iran’s trajectory,
politicians in Italy and France have tested positive
for coronavirus.)
Qom is an important center for a government
in which many high officials—right up to President
Hassan Rouhani—are also clerics. And Qom’s reli-
gious leaders are powerful political figures in their
own right. A senior cleric who represents the city
in parliament, Mojtaba Zonnour, is among theMarch 11, when a new cluster of cases was tied to
a call center in Seoul.
The emphasis on diagnosis is also being cred-
ited with helping patients get treatment early, bring-
ing the mortality rate from the coronavirus to less
than 1%—below every other affected country save
Singapore, where the outbreak is on a much smaller
scale. “The coronavirus is highly contagious, and
even those without symptoms can transmit the virus,
which makes it hard to stop infection among com-
munities,” says Lee Hyukmin, director at the Korean
Society for Laboratory Medicine and a professor at
Yonsei Severance Hospital. “Without enough testing
capabilities, the death rate will be high, as the delay
worsens the damage in the lungs.”
By late February, when South Korea’s outbreak
began to accelerate, four local companies had approval
to sell kits to test for the virus. The country is nowable to test more than 10,000 people a day. In neigh-
boring Japan, a total of only 9,600 people had been
tested as of March 10.
The tests can deliver results within hours and
are relatively easy to administer. Officials in Seoul
have started operating drive-thru stations in three
districts where people can get tested without leav-
ing their cars.
The country is also exporting its testing kits, includ-
ing to China, Europe, and Pakistan, according to the
manufacturers. “We are testing people on the big-
gest scale, at the fastest pace in the world, and dis-
closing the results transparently and instantly to the
public,” said President Moon Jae-in in a speech on
March 3. “We believe this is the best thing we can do
for now in order to prevent further spread in local
communities.” �Heejin Kim, Sohee Kim, and Claire
Che, with Jihye Lee▶ A woman wears a
mask in Tehran