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According to a report from the Daily Wire, hundreds of Iranians have died and thousands have been hospitalized after drinking high-concentration alcohol because they falsely believed in could cure the coronavirus.
“More than 600 people have died after attempting the cure and some 3,000 are now in hospital, Iranian judicial spokesman Gholam Hossein Esmaili said Tuesday,” According to the Daily Mail.
“The numbers are very high and are beyond our expectations,” Esmaili said.
“Alcohol consumption is not a cure but can be lethal.”
“A number of people have been arrested… and we will deal with them decisively,” Esmaili explained. “They must be held accountable for their criminal acts, for causing death and damage to citizens.”
On March 27, the Associated Press reported that hundreds of Iranians had died from drinking “industrial alcohol.”
“Iranian media report nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 1,000 sickened so far by ingesting methanol across the Islamic Republic, where drinking alcohol is banned and where those who do rely on bootleggers,” the AP reported. “An Iranian doctor helping the country’s Health Ministry told The Associated Press on Friday the problem was even greater, giving a death toll of around 480 with 2,850 people sickened.”
The AP added, “The poisonings come as fake remedies spread across social media in Iran, where people remain deeply suspicious of the government after it downplayed the crisis for days before it overwhelmed the country.”
On March 16 Reuters reported that the Director of Emergency Operations in the World Health Organization’s (WHO), Dr. Rick Brennan, said the outbreak oo=f the virus in Iran is much worse than what they’re reporting.
“Iran has the third highest case load after China and Italy, with nearly 13,000 confirmed cases, according to WHO data,” Reuters reported. “However, Brennan, who just returned from a mission to Iran last week, said that the number of cases reported could represent only about a fifth of the real numbers.”
Brennan said, “We’ve said the weakest link in their chain is the data.”
“They are rapidly increasing their ability to test and so the numbers will go up.”
#Iran coronavirus Friday:
Tolls climbs 34 dead & 388 infected.
Likely spread to 22 provinces.
Peak will come next weeks as tests kits are more available, health minister.
Real infected numbers about 10,000 to 15,000, says head of health committee of Tehran city council.
#كرونا— Farnaz Fassihi (@farnazfassihi) February 28, 2020
More from The Daily Wire:
It is unclear whether the deaths reported by The Daily Mail were new deaths or if they were just updated numbers from the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Daily Wire previously reported:
Back in late February, Iran’s government claimed that only 388 people had been infected and that 34 people had died from the coronavirus, which originated in China.
At the time, the BBC reported that the real number of deaths was believed to be at least 210, a number that came from sources inside the country’s health system.
New York Times reporter Farnaz Fassihi reported at the same time: “Real infected numbers about 10,000 to 15,000, says head of health committee of Tehran city council.”
Foreign Policy highlighted just a few ways of how the coronavirus spread rapidly throughout Iran: “They include the government trying to hide the outbreak; insufficient testing capacity; refusal to cordon off cities and Shiite shrines; superstition, politicization, and propaganda blaming Iran’s usual enemies; and the lack of seriousness in dealing with the crisis.”