Iran on Thursday announced seven additional deaths from the COVID-19 coronavirus, as the head of the country’s parliament national security and foreign policy committee announced he had been infected.
Mujtaba ZulNour, said in a social media video that he had tested positive and had entered quarantine. The development came after the Islamic Republic’s deputy health minister, Iraj Harirchi, and MP Mouhmoud Sadeghi, also caught the virus.
Iran now has the highest death toll from the virus — 26 dead from among 245 confirmed cases — outside of China, where the outbreak began. That is up from the previously reported 19 death and 139 cases.
The epicenter in the Middle East’s most-affected country appears to be in the holy Shiite city of Qom, where the faithful in reverence reach out to kiss and touch a famous shrine.
The tiny, oil-rich nation of Kuwait announced a sudden jump to 43 cases from 26 on Thursday as well, all linked to travelers who recently came from Iran.
As the worst-hit areas of Asia continued to struggle with a viral epidemic, with hundreds more cases reported Thursday in South Korea and China, worries about infection and containment spread across the globe.
For the first time, the coronavirus has caused more new cases outside China, the epicenter of the outbreak, than inside the country. With Brazil on Wednesday confirming Latin America’s first case, the virus has reached every continent but Antarctica.
The United States, which has 60 cases, hasn’t been spared the fear that has swept Asia, Europe and the Mideast. US President Donald Trump declared that the country was “very, very ready” for whatever threat the coronavirus brings, and he put Vice President Mike Pence in charge of overseeing the country’s response.
As the epidemic expanded geographically, worries about the COVID-19 illness multiplied.
“The sudden increases of cases in Italy, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Korea are deeply concerning,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
