© WANA via REUTERSA medical team sprays disinfectant in Mashhad, Iran
Pir Hossein Kolivand is being treated for the virus and is currently in good health, his office said in a statement, adding that there is "no need for concern."
Numerous high-level Iranian officials have fallen ill to the virus. Recently, 23 lawmakers have tested positive for the illness in the Islamic Republic. On Monday, Mohammad Mirmohammadi, a member of a council that advises the supreme leader, died after falling sick from the virus. His death follows those of two other high-profile Iranians - a former ambassador and a newly-elected member of Parliament - who succumbed to coronavirus.
In total, 77 Iranians have died from coronavirus and 2,336 have been infected, Iran's Health Ministry announced on Tuesday. The country has become one of the major hotspots for the virus outside of China - so much so that Beijing has implemented forced quarantine of all travelers arriving from the Islamic Republic (along with South Korea, Japan, and Italy).
Comment: Shanghai too. Everyone arriving from those countries will be quarantined for 14 days.
Shanghai announced earlier that it would also force visitors who had recently traveled to countries with "relatively serious virus conditions" to undergo a two-week quarantine, but the city did not specify which countries it was referring to.
The move came as China reported an increase in the number of coronavirus cases imported from abroad. There have been 13 confirmed cases of the virus being brought into mainland China - all involving Chinese nationals returning from overseas. The figured spiked after it was revealed that eight Chinese nationals returning from Italy's northern Lombardy region tested positive for the virus in eastern Zhejiang province.
Tehran has accused Washington of retooling the epidemic to spread fear in the country. The Islamic Republic also rebuffed an aid offer from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, accusing him of using the health crisis as part of a "political-psychological game."
Originating in Wuhan, China, the coronavirus has killed more than 3,000 people worldwide - the vast majority in mainland China.
Comment: England's chief medical officer is making headlines for stating that the worst case scenario for the UK could see 80% of the population infected. He clarified by stressing it's much more likely to be less than that, but bigger numbers get bigger headlines: Given that 20% of the passengers on board the quarantined Princess Diamond cruise ship got the virus, with any luck an outbreak in the population will infect a smaller percentage than that. Plus, it seems that around half of cases are asymptomatic, so even if it managed to infect 20% of the population, 10% would show symptoms. 1-2% of 10% is 0.1-0.2%, which is around the same number of people who typically die of the flu every year. But so far, there aren't signs it will come to that. Hopefully it stays that way.
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates to shield the U.S. economy from the coronavirus fallout. RT's Book Bust spoke with Jefferey Tucker of the American Institute for Economic Research to see what's going on with the markets:
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