New Delhi (NVI): After six deaths due to coronavirus, Iranian authorities have ordered closure of schools, universities and cultural centres in more than a dozen affected provinces in a bid to contain the outbreak, according to media reports.
The order comes after the sixth death from coronavirus was reported in Iran, the highest in any other country outside mainland China.
Ali Aghazadeh, governor of the Markazi province, said that tests of a patient who recently died in the central city of Arak were positive for the virus.
So far, 28 cases have been confirmed in Iran, but it was not immediately clear if the sixth fatality was among those cases.
Italy’s prime minister announced a ban on people entering or leaving new coronavirus hotspots as the number of confirmed infections rose sharply to 79, in an outbreak that has claimed two lives in the country.
“In zones considered hotspots, neither entry nor exit will be authorised without special permission,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said during a news conference, adding that businesses and schools in the areas would be closed.
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote to Bill Gates after the billionaire’s foundation committed $100 million in emergency funding to help China bolster epidemiological research, emergency intervention, and the research and development of drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, according to state media.
Almost 100 people died of the novel coronavirus in mainland China, as the global death toll hit 2,461.
According to China’s National Health Commission (NHC), there were 97 new deaths reported in mainland China on Saturday, all but one of which were in Hubei, the province at the center of the outbreak. Of the total deaths, 2,442 have been in reported from China.
