Iran’s COVID-19 map gets 7 ‘red’ spots as Omicron rages on

According to the latest updates, seven cities located in the Iranian provinces of Isfahan, South Khorasan, Qom and Yazd were once again classified as “red”.

The situation in the capital, Tehran, and 42 other cities were also updated to “orange.”

The map also shows 217 “yellow” cities and 181 “blue” ones, with the number of “orange” and “red” classifications expected to sharply rise in the weeks to come.

Official data released on Friday by the country’s Health Ministry showed coronavirus-related complications have taken the lives of another 23 people in Iran over the past 24 hours taking the overall death toll in Iran to 132,356.

According to the data 16,757 new cases of COVID-19 were detected in Iran over the past 24 hours. Some 994 cases had to be hospitalized for professional medical care.

Meanwhile, 130,711,386 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in Iran so far. Over 298,590 doses were injected in the past 24 hours.

The Omicron-fueled surge has prompted officials to sound the alarm over a sixth wave of infections and call on the public to better abide by the health protocols and get inoculated.

At the same time, the country has stepped up its mass vaccination campaign using both domestically-developed shots and imported ones to increase protection against the virus.