Contradictory coronavirus death tolls reported by Iran health ministry officials

While Iran’s health ministry announced on Sunday that the death toll from coronavirus for the whole country is 194, the health minister’s representative in Gilan province said that more than 200 have died in Gilan alone.

More than 200 people have died from coronavirus in Gilan, the semi-official YJC news agency reported Mohammad Hossein Ghorbani as saying on Sunday.

Earlier on Sunday, Iran said 194 people had died from coronavirus across the country and 6,566 were now infected.

The health ministry also said that 496 have been infected in Gilan. Ghorbani, however, said that between 800 to 900 have been infected in the province.

The northern province of Gilan has become one of the epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

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Women wearing protective masks cross a street in the Iranian capital Tehran on March 2, 2020, following the coronavirus outbreak. (AFP)

This is not the first time the health ministry’s figures have come into question.

A lawmaker from the province had previously said that the death toll from coronavirus in Iran is “much higher” than the official death toll.

“I have statistics about the number of deaths due to coronavirus from three different cemeteries in Rasht and I have to say that the numbers are much higher than what is being said,” he said.

While the official death toll from the virus for the whole country stood at 12 on February 24, a lawmaker from Qom said on the same day that 50 people had died from coronavirus in his city alone.