Iranian president defends virus response: ‘We spoke to people in a honest way’

Iranian officials defended their response to the spread of the coronavirus after 147 more people died, raising the country’s overall death toll to 1,135.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a speech to his Cabinet Wednesday that the government was “straightforward” in its messaging and reacted sufficiently to address the crisis.

“We spoke to people in a honest way. We had no delay,” he said on a state-run news station.

But according to The Associated Press, people still filled the streets and markets as the numbers continued to rise over the past 30 days. Traffic in Tehran this week has suggested normal levels of activity ahead of the Persian New Year, Nowruz, on Friday.

Iran’s deputy health minister, Alireza Raisi, on Wednesday urged the public to avoid crowded spaces for two “golden weeks.”

“This is not a good situation at all,” he said.

Massive closures in Iran would add to the economic pain the country is experiencing under sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

The government has been calling on clerics to close mosques for the past month, but it wasn’t until this week that officials demanded the closing of shrines and holy sites, where large amounts of people normally gather for Nowruz.

Iran has ordered sanitation workers to disinfect public spaces, though the government did not impose mandatory self-isolation periods, as some state and local governments in the U.S. have done, as well as several European countries.