Coronavirus spreads in MENA with epicenter in Iran

LONDON - The rapid rise in coronavirus cases has further raised fears of a pandemic, as five more countries reported their first infections and the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the outbreak could spread worldwide.

The WHO on Friday raised its global risk assessment of the new coronavirus to its highest level after the epidemic spread to sub-Saharan Africa and caused financial markets to plunge.

World share markets crashed again, winding up their worst weekly fall since the 2008 global financial crisis and bringing the global wipeout to $6 trillion. Disruptions to international travel and supply chains, school closures and cancellations of major events have all blackened the outlook for a world economy that was already struggling with the fallout of a trade war between the US and China.

Hopes that the epidemic that started in China late last year would be over in months, and that economic activity would quickly return to normal, have been shattered as the number of international cases has spiraled.

The virus - for which there is no vaccine yet - causes mild disease in four out of five infected people. However, it can be fatal for the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes.

"The outbreak is getting bigger," WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva. "The scenario of the coronavirus reaching multiple countries, if not all countries around the world, is something we have been looking at and warning against since quite a while."

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it would be a "big mistake" to switch from a public health strategy of containment to mitigation, where authorities accept the virus is spreading. In the last few days, 24 cases had been exported from Italy to 14 countries and 97 cases had been exported from Iran to 11 countries, Tedros said.

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, ten countries have now reported cases of the virus: Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Oman, Israel/Palestine, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Algeria. As governments in the region scramble to contain the virus' spread, there is growing concern over states' capability to handle the outbreak due to war, conflict and weak public health systems.

Botched response in Iran?

Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies programme, said a planned WHO mission to Iran has been delayed due to "issues with getting flights and access to Iran right now". Ryan said the government of the UAE was helping to facilitate access and delivery of supplies to Iran, which has been under US sanctions since Washington's withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal.

Outside China, Iran has the largest number of deaths, with at least 15 dying from the virus - known as COVID-19 - within a week. Thirty four people have died from COVID-19 in Iran and 388 are infected by the virus, health ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur announced on state television on Friday.

However, many people on social media have accused the Shiite theocracy in Tehran of botching the reaction to the coronavirus outbreak by withholding information on and under-reporting the number of deaths and infections, and of failing to act with urgency.

There are also concerns that Iranian health officials are choosing to bury the bodies of people who have succumbed to the virus, although China has advised that bodies should be cremated in order to prevent the spread of the infection. The burning of bodies is considered "haram", or forbidden, in the Islamic religion.

Experts, including at the World Health Organization, have also expressed worry that the Islamic Republic may be under-reporting the number of cases. Iran denied for days that the virus was in the country, acknowledging it just as it was trying to pump up enthusiasm for the country's parliamentary election — a vote that saw the lowest voter turnout since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

By doing so, Iran likely allowed the virus to spread rapidly, reaching even into the upper echelons of its power structure as it sickened four lawmakers, top clerics and other officials.

Eventually, the outbreak of the new virus in Iran became evident in dramatic fashion. The head of Iran's task force to stop the illness, deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi, was seen coughing, sweating and wheezing across televised interviews before acknowledging he was infected. Then days later, a visibly pale official sat only meters away from President Hassan Rouhani and other top leaders before she too reportedly came down with the virus.

Iranian clerics have insisted on keeping Shiite shrines in the country open. The Shiite holy city of Qom, a place of pilgrimage for Shiite Muslims from across the MENA region and the world, was the epicenter of the country’s outbreak. Some Iranian clerics have also offered advice with no basis in science, like Sheikh Abbas Tabrizian in Qom - a proponent of "Islamic Medicine" - who told followers to give themselves a suppository of essential oils to ward off the virus.

Saudi Arabia, in comparison, has taken the unprecedented decision to close off the holiest sites in Islam to foreign pilgrims over the coronavirus, disrupting travel for thousands of Muslims already headed to the kingdom and potentially affecting plans later this year for millions more ahead of the fasting month of Ramadan and the annual hajj pilgrimage.

Vulnerable states

Iran’s success — or failure — in combating COVID-19 will have an impact far beyond the country's 80 million people, as the majority of cases in the Mideast now link back to Iran. The Islamic Republic is the only country in the Gulf region that has reported deaths, but five of the ten Middle Eastern countries that reported infections (Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Kuwait and Lebanon) said their first cases were all linked to people travelling from Iran.

The concern about the virus' spread in Iran has reached even further afield, to Austria - where Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg tested negative for it after a recent trip to Tehran - and to New Zealand, where health officials on Friday announced its first case of the coronavirus, a person in their 60s who recently returned from Iran. 

Belarus's health ministry said that an infected Iranian student who arrived in the country from Azerbaijan last week was in a "satisfactory" condition. Iran's neighbour Azerbaijan said that a Russian citizen who had arrived from Iran had been confirmed to have contracted COVID-19.

The country of Georgia introduced a two-week ban on Iranian nationals entering the country, after announcing on Wednesday that its first case of coronavirus had been identified in a Georgian citizen who had traveled back from Iran.

Three new cases reported on Friday in Bahrain took the total diagnosed with the coronavirus there to 36, and two new cases reported by Kuwait took the total infected there to 45. All those infected in Bahrain and Kuwait had travelled to Iran or were contaminated by people who went there, according to officials in the two Gulf Arab states.

The United Arab Emirates has granted Iran permission to send a handful of flights to Dubai to fly Iranians home, the ISNA news agency reported, citing information from Iran's consulate in Dubai. Meanwhile guests at two Abu Dhabi hotels who interacted with two Italian professional cyclists with coronavirus have been placed under quarantine in the hotels, the state news agency WAM reported. The final two stages of the UAE Tour, featuring some of the world's leading riders, had been cancelled due to the two Italian participants testing positive on Thursday.

Israel on Friday confirmed three new cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of Israeli cases to six. Three of the six tested positive after traveling on the virus-stricken cruise ship Diamond Princess. One individual had been in close contact with a man who tested positive after visiting Italy, another country that has been hit hard by the spread of COVID-19.

Saudi Arabia meanwhile has reported no deaths or infections and has tightened travel restrictions to try to prevent the virus spreading across its borders. The United States asked its military in Saudi Arabia to avoid crowded venues including malls and cinemas as coronavirus was reported spreading in neighbouring countries, according to a document from the US embassy seen by Reuters news agency on Friday.

Oman on Friday restricted the entry of citizens from other Gulf Arab states who had previously been able to enter by showing national identification cards.

The most concerning possibility for the spread of COVID-19 in the MENA region is that it will reach especially vulnerable, conflict-ridden states like Syria - where millions of have been internally displaced during that country's civil war - and Yemen, which was identified in a 2016 analysis by the Rand Corporation as being among the 25 countries in the world that are most vulnerable to infectious outbreaks. Among the countries heading that list were Somalia, South Sudan and Mauritania.