Over the past week, the number of cities on coronavirus red alert surged by 21 to 55, according to the Health Ministry, following nationwide school and university reopenings as well as widespread travel and social gatherings during the recent Norouz holidays.
The ministry’s report published on Friday showed that extremely high-risk cities, coded as red, spiked by 60% to 55 and high-risk cities, coded as orange, rose from 69 to 84, ISNA reported.
The report marked a significant increase in Covid-related hospitalizations in 12 of the country’s 31 provinces, including the heavily populated Tehran and Khorasan Razavi provinces.
In the last 24 hours, 23 more Iranians died from the highly contagious coronavirus and 1,015 more contracted the disease.
Dangers of traveling during the two-week holiday at the start of the New Year were mostly neutralized by high vaccine coverage across the country, head of Covid-19 Operations in the province of Tehran, Alireza Zali, said on Saturday.
“The third dose had a visible effect on Covid death rates,” he added, and once again encouraged the public to get the booster shot.
Over 64 million Iranians have received the first dose, 57 million the second and 26.7 million have gotten all three shots since vaccination efforts started more than a year ago.