A member of Tehran’s City Council has revealed that during the first two months of the coronavirus outbreak the overall death toll in Iran's capital increased by 3,700, compared with the same period last year.
Iranian officials have not released the epidemic toll in Tehran, but the nationwide death toll they have announced is just 6,000; too low to account for the increased number of deaths in the capital.
Meanwhile, the Sharq newspaper reports that the number of people who died of other causes during the epidemic, such as road accidents has substantially decreased. Therefore, even more of the deaths in the capital can be attributed to Covid-19.
Earlier, a member of the Tehran City Council, Nahid Khodakarami, had said that between seventy to 100 deaths from coronavirus were buried in the city's cemeteries each day.
Therefore, it can be estimated that between 4,000 to 7,000 have died of the epidemic in Tehran alone since the outbreak in February.
Daily Sharq also reported that since the outbreak of coronavirus in Iran, the Civil Registration Department has "surprisingly" stopped announcing the number of new deaths in the country.
Earlier, on April 12, Tehran's deputy mayor for municipal services, Mojtaba Yazdani, had announced that a new plot of land had been prepared for the victims of the deadly coronavirus in Tehran's main cemetery, Behesht-e Zahra, and that 10,000 new graves had been excavated so far.
Nonetheless, the Islamic Republic Ministry of Health still insists that the number of people fallen victim to COVID-19 nationwide is around 6,000.
In the meantime, daily Sharq asserts that the statistics of the Ministry of Health are only based on the number of people who have visited the medical centers and tested for coronavirus.
According to daily Sharq, only 442,590 corona tests have so far been performed in Iran.
Earlier, some members of Majles (Iranian parliament) and Tehran City Councilors had accused the Ministry of Health of secrecy, and covering up the data related to the victims of COVID-19.
