Iran's senior vice president and two other cabinet members have contracted the new coronavirus, a semiofficial news agency reported Wednesday as the death toll in the country from the outbreak rose by 62 to 354.
The report by the Fars news agency, believed to be close to Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, comes as President Hassan Rouhani took control of the country's much-criticized response to the virus and the COVID-19 illness it causes. Authorities announced that there were some 9,000 confirmed cases of the virus across Iran.
The Fars story also comes amid days of speculation about the health of Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri. Jahangiri has not been seen in pictures of recent top-level meetings, raising concerns about him.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. The vast majority of people recover from the new virus.
There was no immediate report on state media about the Iranian officials being ill and no other media outlet in Iran immediately carried the report. Fars published it in a picture list of names in Farsi, with Jahangiri's name at the top, saying he was in quarantine and improving, without elaborating.
Fars said the others sick are Ali Asghar Mounesan, minister of cultural heritage, handcrafts and tourism, and Reza Rahmani, minister of industry, mines and business.
The report comes at a sensitive time for Rouhani, who faced criticism for not being out front on the response to the virus. He's been seen at government meetings where members sit meters apart from each other, likely to stop the potential spread of the virus. He also wore latex gloves while planting a tree at a recent event.
Hardliners long have tried to embarrass Rouhani, whose administration pushed through Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Rouhani has 11 vice presidents. Another, Massoumeh Ebtekar, earlier fell ill with the virus. Ebtekar is better known to Americans as “Sister Mary,” the English-speaking spokeswoman for those who seized the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and began the 444-day hostage crisis.
Ebtekar tweeted Wednesday she had recovered from the virus, while linking to images of Western officials who have contracted the illness.
Across the Middle East, the vast majority of the nearly 10,000 people who have contracted the coronavirus and the COVID-19 illness it causes are in hard-hit Iran or had recently returned from there.
The Islamic Republic has one of the world's worst death tolls outside of China, the epicenter of the outbreak. Outside of Iran, only Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon have recorded deaths from the virus in the Middle East.
The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic.
There are concerns that the number of infections across Iran is much higher than the confirmed cases reported by the government, which is struggling to contain or manage its spread. The rising casualty figures each day in Iran suggest the fight against the new coronavirus is far from over.
At least seven Iranian officials and politicians, including an adviser to Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, have died from the coronavirus, according to state media.
Among the dead are also five of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps and an unspecified number of the Guard's volunteer Basij force.
That the Guard is involved in the relief effort of a major catastrophe is not surprising in Iran. The Guard, whose forces include an estimated 125,000-plus troops and 600,000 mission-ready volunteers, routinely respond to the earthquakes that shake the country. Recent floods saw its troops mobilize as well.
In moves to prevent panic over the coronavirus, Rouhani appealed to people not to spread rumors and the judiciary banned most officials from announcing numbers of those infected.
"Only the Health Ministry ... is in charge of announcing figures ... violators will be charged with acting against national security," said Iran's Prosecutor-General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri in a statement.
