The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 20,000 people across the Middle East, with Iran accounting for half of that figure, according to an AFP tally.
But despite the death toll and over 907,000 reported infections the region has been relatively lightly hit by the pandemic that has killed more than 566,000 people across the globe and infected more than 12.7 million.
Iran, which has been struggling to contain the outbreak since announcing its first cases in February, has reported more than 12,829 deaths and 257,303 infections.
Infections in the Islamic republic have been on the rise since early May, prompting authorities to make wearing masks mandatory in enclosed public spaces.
On Sunday, the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the resurgence “truly tragic” and urged all citizens to help rein it in.
The latest figures come amid calls to have any potential vaccine to be distributed to the countries that need it most rather than those with the funds.
On Saturday, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates called for COVID-19 drugs and an eventual vaccine to be made available to the countries that need them the most, and not to the “highest bidder,” saying relying on market forces would prolong the deadly pandemic.
“If we just let drugs and vaccines go to the highest bidder, instead of to the people and the places where they are most needed, we’ll have a longer, more unjust, deadlier pandemic,” Gates, founder of Microsoft, said in a video released on Saturday during a virtual COVID-19 conference organized by the International AIDS Society.
“We need leaders to make these hard decisions about distributing based on equity, not just on market-driven factors.”
