While admitting that the official death toll from the coronavirus outbreak in Iran has exceeded 6,000, the Islamic Republic Minister of Health warned of a heavy second wave of the disease next autumn and winter.

"A relatively heavy attack by a combination of flu and coronavirus is expected in the fall and winter", the Minister, Saeed Namaki, reiterated.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)- linked Tasnim News Agency, cited Saeed Namaki, as saying in a meeting attended by the country's vice president, deputy ministers and senior managers of the Ministry of Health on Thursday, "Let us prepare ourselves for that time."

Furthermore, he asserted that for the "current year Iran needs to strategically store the influenza vaccine, medicine, medical equipment, make-shift hospitals, and manpower."

Meanwhile, he disclosed that Iran was set to copy the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC).

"What we are vigorously after is the establishment of a CDC, which has never existed before in the country", Namaki maintained on Thursday, April 30.

The official death toll from the pandemic in Tehran is more than 6,000 and infections near 100,000. However, many have raised alarm that many more have died and contracted the disease.

Earlier, several members of Majlis (the Islamic Consultative Assembly or parliament of the Islamic Republic) and Tehran City Councilors had announced that the number of people fallen victim to COVID-19 in Iran is much higher than the official statistics announced by the Ministry of Health.

A member of the parliament's National Committee for the Prevention and Control of Coronavirus, Mohammad Reza Mahboubfar, said last Sunday that the number of COVID-19 related patients and casualties was way more than the figures announced by the President Hassan Rouhani's administration.

Parliament Research Center also said in a report that the actual death toll was about twice as high, and the number of people infected by the Novel coronavirus eight to ten times higher than the official figures.