Iranian leaders once said Covid-19 would not affect their country, but the country is now the world's fourth largest outbreak.

Nearly 30 Iranian government officials and parliamentarians infected with nCoV, a senior adviser to the supreme leader, have died. The Iranian Ministry of Health recommends sending 300,000 militants to each sterilization house. The top prosecutor warned anyone who speculated on hoarding masks and other public health supplies at risk of death.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards said their hospitals would now be dedicated to accepting nCoV patients and ready to set up a field hospital with more than 8,000 beds. But health experts fear the reaction is too late.

The first cases of the virus were recorded in the sacred city of Qom, home to 1.2 million people on February 19, but more than two weeks later, Iran did not blockade the city. Instead of avoiding going to Qom, many people continue to come here, kissing gates and pillars in the temple in the belief that the sacred place will cure the disease instead of spreading the virus.

"Some devotees in other regions think this is the time to show their loyalty to Islam and Qom by coming here during difficult times," former Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Ali Abtahi said.

The delayed response and the sharp increase in the number of cases in the past week have raised doubts that Iranian officials may have hidden the outbreak and its severity for nearly the past month.

The situation in Iran is unusual compared to other places. Based on official data, the death rate in Iran is the highest in the world, raising doubts that the actual number of infections could be higher than statistically. According to official data, Iran recorded more than 2,300 infected people, nearly 80 died. Some experts, meanwhile, believe that based on the number of deaths and epidemic trends elsewhere, it is possible to estimate the actual number of people infected with nCoV in Iran at around 4,000.

Isaac Bogoch, an expert at the University of Toronto, and other researchers last week made much higher estimates. They speculate that the number of cases in Iran is about 23,000 and that the epidemic has lasted at least a month.

Iran yesterday announced the temporary release of 54,000 asymptomatic prisoners with nCoV infection in the hope of reducing spread in crowded prisons. But it is unclear how many prisoners have been tested, due to the serious shortage of testing kits in the country. Because of that shortage, no one could predict how far the nCoV had spread.

Ordinary people also don't believe in government figures. "The epidemic has spread all over the country. How can it be believed that it broke out more than 10 days? Clearly they concealed the truth to serve their own plans. They once again lied to us." , Fariba, 34, a high school teacher in the city of Tabriz, said.

NYTimes reported that a number of hospital security staff banned physicians from disclosing information about supplies shortages, number of patients or deaths related to nCoV.

A nurse in a northwestern Iran city said the security agency warned them that sharing information about nCoV patients "poses a threat to national security", "confusing the public" and will be severely punished. An unnamed pathologist in Tehran said nCoV laboratory staff were threatened with interrogation and arrest if they provided information to the media.

"It's disgraceful," said the pathologist in a telephone interview. "By turning Covid-19 into a national security issue, they are putting more pressure and strain on physicians, creating an environment of chaos and fear."

"Officials do not admit that nCoV appeared in Iran for a month and then underestimated the impact of the outbreak by telling people that it was just like the flu," said an unnamed doctor in the province. Khuzestan said. "Officials do not want to clarify the situation because they fear that it will make people panic, but the more they do, the more the nCoV becomes and the more paralyzed the country is," the doctor said.

In Golestan province, where Iranian authorities said the number of cases was about 20, top local health official Abdulreza Fazel expressed frustration at a press conference last week. "We shouted to the Ministry of Health that we found 594 patients with nCoV, but the ministry said that because we had no positive test results, we were not given the necessary equipment. They kept saying ' wait, wait ', then suddenly the local message we were mind translated. "

"Without them notifying us, we knew from the beginning we were mindful," Fazel said.

At least two lawmakers publicly accused the government of concealing deaths from nCoV by filling in another cause on the death certificate. "Doctors at Kamkar and Foghani hospitals wrote that the cause of death was due to respiratory failure," Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, MP from Qom, wrote on Twitter last weekend. "But they know very well that patients die in nCoV isolation areas."

Some accused the leadership of hiding Covid-19 information to ensure the proportion of voters who went to parliament to vote on February 21. Some officials say that the Iranian authorities lowered the severity of the epidemic out of fear it would be considered a failure that the opponent could exploit. Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabeie denied the allegation last week, saying the epidemic should not be politicized.

Iranian Ministry of Health spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour also denied the allegations, saying the difference between local estimates and official figures was due to the delay in the inspection time to confirm. Jahanpour said the suite verified the results twice before including them in official statistics.

Covid-19 attacked Iran at a time when it was vulnerable, especially to the leadership. The Iranian economy has been stifled by US sanctions. The army was damaged after General Qassem Soleimani, commanding officer of Quds of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards, was killed by the US. Iranian confidence in the leadership has waned after authorities stepped up several protests since last year and belatedly admitted the accidental shooting of a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed 176 people.

"They fall from crisis to crisis and try to fix each problem," said Sanam Vakil, an expert at London-based Chatham House, a research institute. "They underestimated the impact of Covid-19."

For years, Iran has been proud of the capacity of the public health system, said Amir A. Afkhami, an expert at George Washington University. In 2008, Iran effectively prevented cholera from neighboring countries, in part by banning the sale of fresh fruit and vegetables and street food in some areas. However, this time, Iranian health officials were too subjective.

Because of relying on trade with China in the face of U.S. sanctions, Iran was slow to restrict travel with China when the outbreak began in Wuhan in December 2019.

After that, Tehran also boasted about exporting masks to China, but did not expect that it would be needed in the next few weeks. That move has depleted Iran's supplies of masks, while other countries are quietly reserving reserves, Afkhami said. "Now they are in shortage of masks that is the result of their self-defense."