Iranian health officials attempt to explain Hassan Rouhani's '25 million infected' remark

Iranian officials have been scrambling to downplay or find a good explanation to President Rouhani’s statement wherein he claimed that 25 million people in Iran had been infected with COVID-19. The figure of 25 million put forward by the Iranian President is unbelievably higher than the country's official number of reported cases that stands at 273,788.

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Iran's virus figures disputed

According to reports, Iranian officials have tried to downplay the President’s comments by claiming that he was referring to serological blood tests that measures and person’s exposure to the illness and cannot be accurately relied upon up to provide a true number of infected. Moreover, 25 million people as stated by the Iranian President would constitute almost one-thing of Iran’s entire population.

As per reports, Mostafa Qanei, head of the government’s scientific committee of the coronavirus task force has stated that Serological tests that the Iranian President based his figure on are only limited to revealing if a person has somehow been exposed to the virus in the past and that PCR tests of the throat and nose were still needed before it could be determined if a person has COVID-19.

Iran has been the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in the Middle East. The rate of new infections and cases has been on the rise in Iran since the country began easing restrictions.

However, despite the recent rise in cases, Rouhani’s figure of 25 million infected people in Iran took a lot of people by surprise. Even the United States, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began has reported just under 4 million virus cases.

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