A glance at the prevalence of coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) in Iran: Strengths and weaknesses

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline, patients with COVID-19 have symptoms ranging from mild respiratory illness (respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath, and breathing difficulties) to severe (pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, kidney failure, and death).1 Based on scientific reports,2 this pandemic began in Wuhan City, China, and quickly spread throughout the country. Among these states, Tehran has shown the highest incidence, with 3,774 positive cases.2 Although Iran has achieved more success in controlling and preventing patient deaths than some developed countries, such as Italy (CFR, 6.81%), Iran has faced some difficulties in controlling this epidemic. [...]achieving success and overcoming COVID-19 in Iran requires that we understand these deficiencies. Some of the most effective actions in Iran in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak included the following: (1) encouraging people to stay home, (2) providing free diagnostic and therapeutic services to COVID-19 patients, (3) allocating at least 1 hospital in each province to providing special services to COVID-19 patients, (4) daily disinfecting public transportation like subways, buses, and taxis, (5) canceling sport competitions, cinemas, theaters, weddings, and funerals, and closing all schools and universities, (6) providing distance and online learning infrastructure for students (7) increasing the capacity of the production of masks and disinfectants by >7 times, (8) extensively informing and promoting a culture of healthcare by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting system and other media, and launching mobile software, websites and telephone answering systems to address concerns and questions about COVID-19, (9) encouraging people to eat homemade healthy foods instead of fast food, (10) mobilizing and recruiting all national government and nongovernmental organizations to fight COVID-19 under the auspices of “The National Headquarters for Coronavirus,” (11) governmental support of small and large businesses to compensate for the loss of revenue and jobs, and finally (12) publication of a COVID-19 surveillance guideline by the Ministry of Health for various organizations (eg, prisons, barracks, etc) to stop and reverse the growing epidemic trend (Table 1).2,3 Table 1. [...]the number of cases in Iran places it in the statistical middle of the COVID-19 outbreak countries (Fig. 1).