The Omicron variant is fast spreading across Iran, with an official from Iran’s Covid-19 taskforce, Hamidreza Jama’ati, predicting a peak in the next few weeks.

Another taskforce member, infectious diseases expert Payam Tabarsi, told ILNA news agency Wednesday that cases were increasing 40-50 percent daily.

Tabarsi noted it was too soon to say fatalities would be lower from Omicron, first reported in Iran December 19, than from earlier variants as most people infected at the beginning of each peak are young rather than the elderly or those with underlying conditions.

Cases reached 12,000 Wednesday, for the 24-hour period ending noon, up from 9,000 in the previous 24 hours, but the number of fatalities has remained in lower double-digits, well below the 709 peak of August 2021. Around 15 million Iranians have received a booster shot, and the government has announced plans to vaccinate nine to 12 year-olds.

While preliminary evidence worldwide suggests Omicron is less deadly than earlier variants it is also more contagious. The World Health Organization (WHO) this week warned of the danger of further variants and expressed scepticism at those countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, lifting most restrictions.

Iran − which already has the highest official number of deaths and cases in the Middle East, 132,300 with 63 percent fully vaccinated, compared to 22,400 in Egypt with 26 percent fully vaccinated − is about to open schools. The government has also announced plans to hold celebrations, including rallies, for the anniversary of the 1979 revolution.

Numbers, fatalities

There have been many reports in Iran that there are far more deaths from Covid than officially recorded. In August, Kourosh Halakouei-Naeini, an epidemiology professor at Tehran University of Medical Science, claimed in Javan newspaper that the real figure was seven times higher – although the report served the principlist paper’s aim of undermining then president Hassan Rouhani.

Last week, BBC Persian suggested there had been at least 300,000 fatalities, while the United States think-tank the Atlantic Council published an article in December arguing deaths from Covid were 2.5 times higher than numbers announced by the health ministry.

The Albania-based opposition Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) claimed Tuesday that deaths in Iran from Covid were approaching 500,000. The group released a breakdown across 547 cities but gave no source nor explanation of methodology used.

Iranians in social media criticized Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for banning American and British-made vaccines in early 2021, which they say increased infections and deaths last summer with the Delta surge. There were also suggestions that authorities played down the threat from Covid back in 2020 so as not to deter voting in the February parliament election and because Qom, home to many religious seminaries, was an early hot-spot.

As in many other countries, the management of the pandemic became a stick by which critics sought to beat the government, especially in Iran the health minister Saeed Namaki and Rouhani. By contrast, an increasing speed of vaccinations under President Ebrahim Raisi, who took office in August, has been widely highlighted by his conservative supporters.