TEHRAN – The daily death toll from coronavirus in Iran broke a new record for the second day in a row on Monday 9 August with 588 fatalities.

As the fifth wave of coronavirus hits Iran since February 2020, the Health Ministry reported on Monday that 588 patients had died in the past 24 hours.

According to official figures released by the theocratic regime, the total death toll from COVID-19 in Iran has exceeded 94,600 and there is clear evidence to show that the actual number of fatalities is significantly higher. This is because testing facilities for identifying corona patients in the country are seriously inadequate and many coronavirus victims are not tested prior to their death and hence are not included in the official figures.

The number of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in Iran has now surpassed 4,199,500 following the detection of 40,808 new cases since Sunday, more than 5,080 of whom have been admitted to hospital.

More than 3,565,500 patients have recovered from coronavirus infection, including those who have been discharged from hospitals across Iran, according to the Health Ministry’s latest figures.

Among those currently undergoing treatment in medical centres, 6,561 coronavirus patients are in a critical condition. Iran has the highest number of patients with the most acute corona after the US, India, Brazil and Colombia. 26.58 million coronavirus diagnostic tests have so far been carried out on Iran’s 85 million people and only 13 million have received the first dose of coronavirus vaccine.

The number of people infected with COVID-19 across the world has surpassed 203 million and the death toll has exceeded 4.3 million.