Death toll rises to 26 in Iran

Tehran : The outbreak of coronavirus, officially named COVID-19, in Iran has affected 245 people whereas the death toll so far is 26, Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education announced on Thursday.

Kianush Jahanpur, head of Public Relations and Information Centre of Ministry of Health and Medical Education, said that Iran has increased the number of laboratories for testing the virus infection to seven.

These will be increased to 22 in the following week, Xinhua reported.

Iran announced the first cases of viral infection in the central Qom city on February 18.

An earlier report said an Iranian lawmaker had tested positive for the deadly coronavirus. "I give this message (of being affected by the virus) while I am less hopeful about staying alive," Xinhua quoted lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeghi as saying to local media on Wednesday.

The new coronavirus epidemic is at a "decisive point" globally, World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday, urging affected countries to "move swiftly" to contain the disease.

"We're at a decisive point," Tedros told reporters in Geneva.

Pointing to a decline in new cases in China, Tedros said: "It's what's happening in the rest of the world that's now our greatest concern." Urging countries at the early stages of the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease to "move swiftly", he said: "If you act aggressively now, you can contain this virus, you can prevent people getting sick, you can save lives."

Pakistan announced to suspend all flights to Iran, the new hotbed of coronavirus epidemic, as authorities scrambled to screen hundreds of people who recently arrived from Tehran after two persons returning from the country tested positive for the deadly virus.

The government has now collected the data for 1,500 people in Sindh province who have arrived in Pakistan from Iran recently.