Confusion and contradiction reign in Iran's coronavirus reporting

The conflicting information punctuated the mixed messages and confusion that have been emanating from Iran since it disclosed the first coronavirus deaths a little over a week ago. Confirmed infections and deaths have been rising steadily since then, most reported from Qom, a holy city and important Shiite pilgrimage site, but a growing number have emerged in Tehran and other parts of the country of 80 million.

Senior figures in the Tehran hierarchy initially sought to play down the coronavirus as a manageable problem, exaggerated by their foreign enemies as a scare tactic. But at least seven officials have been infected, including the government's top woman in the Cabinet and a Health Ministry deputy who has been leading the coronavirus response. Infections in neighboring countries and even some as far as Canada, Norway and New Zealand have been traced to Iran.

On Thursday, Iranian authorities closed schools, canceled Friday prayers and moved to restrict visitors from China, the original source of the infection, even as Iran seeks to maintain robust commercial relations with China, Iran's economic lifeline in the face of American sanctions.

"We will be facing a pretty difficult week," the health minister, Saeed Namaki, said in televised remarks on Friday. Even though health authorities have yet to assess fully the scope of infections in Iran, Namaki said that "the trajectory we see suggests a main peak of the disease in the next week and next coming days."

He exhorted the public "to please cooperate better, please help in reducing the contamination," and to refrain from traveling - an indication that many Iranians, ingrained with distrust of the government, had been ignoring its advice.

Kianoush Jahanpour, a Health Ministry spokesman, was quoted by official media as saying that 143 additional cases and eight additional deaths had been confirmed since Thursday, when the ministry reported 245 total cases and 26 total deaths.

But official Iranian media dismissed the BBC Persian report of 210 total deaths, which was based on the news service's tally of victims reported independently by hospitals around Iran.

Many of those hospitals lack the test equipment required to confirm a coronavirus infection, raising questions about the accuracy of their reported figures. The Health Ministry has promised to sharply increase its testing capacity by next week.

The confusion also has been amplified by the suspiciously high death rate of 10% in the official figures. The World Health Organization has said the rate was closer to 2%. So the official number of deaths in Iran reported so far, if accurate, suggests that the true number of infections may be higher.

Contradictory information

Adding further to the confusion was the contradictory information coming from some local officials. Nahid Khodakarami, the head of the health committee for Tehran's City Council, for example, was quoted in official media on Friday as saying "it's likely that between 10,000 to 15,000 people in Iran have been infected with coronavirus." How he arrived at the conclusion is unclear.

Contradictory news from Iran on the coronavirus also revealed an embarrassing error by the official media. Elham Sheikhi, 23, a prominent athlete from Isfahan and member of the woman's national team in futsal, a form of soccer, said Friday in a video release that contrary to earlier announcements of her death from the coronavirus - including a condolence message from a sports federation - she was alive and healthy. Sheikhi attributed the mistake to an erroneous assumption, based on the death of a Qom woman with the same age and name.

In Washington, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has helped lead the Trump administration's effort to isolate Iran economically, said in congressional testimony on Friday that he did not believe Iran was prepared to handle the coronavirus outbreak.

"Their health care infrastructure is not robust," Pompeo said, "and to date their willingness to share information about what's really going on inside of the Islamic Republic of Iran has not been robust."

He said he was "very concerned."

Administration critics contend its sanctions policy has contributed to a deterioration in Iran's public health resources.