Iran institute conducts 15,000 virus tests daily

At the century-old Pasteur Institute of Iran, the frontline of the country's fight against the coronavirus outbreak, officials say 15,000 coronavirus tests are being carried out daily.

A rare media tour was granted on Wednesday to the key organisation fighting infectious diseases within Iran, which was founded in the 1920s and is situated just a few blocks away from the home of the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader and presidential palace.

The Pasteur Institute is the leader of the country's 120 laboratories tasked with diagnosing COVID-19 in samples taken from patients across the country and that have confirmed 93,657 cases since the beginning of outbreak.

Director of the Institute, Alireza Biglari said 15,000 tests are taking place everyday at Pasteur alone - a figure that could be tripled in just a few days.

All this despite the sanctions that have severed Iran's access to high throughput instruments that can test on some 10,000 samples a day, according to Biglari.

Iran currently possesses a nationwide network of small instruments capable of carrying out real-time PCR tests on limited numbers of samples.

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are a molecular scientific method for early diagnosis of the COVID-19 disease that can deliver results in less than 15 minutes.

On April 11, Iran announced mass production of testing kits domestically.

But at the beginning of outbreak things were very different, Biglari said, denying claims by Western officials that Iran is not subject to medicine and health sanctions.

"An example of sanctions is when you do not have access to diagnostic testing kits and the sources through which you can gain supplies of them become more and more limited to just a few countries," he told reporters.

"When it is impossible for you to normally send and transfer the money that you want to pay for purchasing the testing kits, it means that you are under sanctions," Biglari added.

He described the coronavirus as a humanitarian crisis and criticised the United States for not lifting the sanctions at these extraordinary times.

Biglari praised China, one of Iran's strategic allies, for not abandoning them in the early days of the pandemic.

"In the first few days of the outbreak we had absolutely no testing kits. One of the countries that assisted us very much by giving us kits was China. Both the Chinese Red Cross and Chinese government generously provided kits for us during the early days of outbreak." He emphasised.

Iran is battling the most severe coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East with 5,957 deaths reported by the Health Ministry until April 29.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough.

But for others, especially older adults and people with health problems, it can cause severe symptoms like pneumonia and lead to death.