Gb2626-2006
gb2626-2006, Iran's health ministry raised Sunday the death toll from the new virus to 8 people in the country, amid concerns that clusters there, as well as in Italy and South Korea, could signal a serious new stage in its global spread. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) While WHO has not yet said where the Iran cases may have originated, the country's health minister, Saeed Namaki, told state TV that officials were nearly certain the virus came from China to Qom in central Iran. Among those who've died from the virus was a merchant who regularly shuttled between the two countries using indirect flights in recent weeks, after Iran stopped direct passenger flights to China, according to Namaki.
gb2626-2006 - He did not say when the merchant had returned from China to Iran nor what steps health officials had taken to quarantine and check on those he'd come into contact with. Health officials said they would help make face-masks and sanitizers available for Iranians, amid concerns that inventory was running low in the capital's pharmacies. A poster detailing precautions to take against the coronavirus is seen at a bus station in Goyang, South Korea, Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
gb2626-2006, Iranians also went to the polls on Friday for nationwide parliamentary elections, with many voters wearing masks and stocking up on hand sanitizer. Iran’s interior ministry on Sunday said voter turnout in last week's parliamentary elections stood at 42.57 percent, the lowest ever since the country's 1979 revolution that ushered in a Shiite clerical government to power. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that Iran's enemies tried to discourage people from voting by exaggerating the threat of the virus, according to Reuters.
gb2626-2006 - “This negative propaganda about the virus began a couple of months ago and grew larger ahead of the election,” said Khamenei, according to his official website Khamenei.ir. “Their media did not miss the tiniest opportunity for dissuading Iranian voters and resorting to the excuse of disease and the virus.” Fox News' Courtney Walsh in Rome and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
gb2626-2006 - Chinese-American immigrant Lindy Li shares her family's daunting story of living and suffering under Communism in China, from extreme poverty to murders, to oppressive misogyny, to censorship. Even today, China's communist regime is silencing coronavirus victims. Finally, Lindy sounds the alarm on the dangers of Bernie Sanders' 'revolution' to make the United States a socialist country. President Trump was furious that 14 Americans infected with the coronavirus returned to the United States without his permission rather than remain in quarantine overseas, according to a new report.