Coronavirus cases surge in Iran

Iran's confirmed coronavirus cases rose to 189,876 on Monday after an overnight registration of 2,449 new infections, official IRNA news agency reported.

At his daily briefing, Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman for Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, said out of the new cases in the past 24 hours, 842 have been hospitalized.

The pandemic has claimed the lives of 8,950 people in Iran, up by 113 in the past 24 hours.

Besides, 150,590 have recovered and been discharged from hospitals while 2,765 remain in critical condition.

According to Lari, 1,269,194 lab tests for COVID-19 have been carried out in Iran as of Monday.

She said the provinces of Khuzestan, West Azarbaijan, Hormozgan, Kordestan, and Sistan and Baluchestan are in the high-risk "red" condition, while the number of hospitalized patients is increasing in the provinces of Tehran, Khorasan Razavi, and Bushehr.

The Iranian health official urged all people regardless of age, to honor social distancing and wear face masks in public places.

Iran announced its first cases of COVID-19 on February 19.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) emerged in late 2019 in China's Hubei province, and the virus has spread to over 200 countries and territories since then.

To date, COVID-19 cases surpassed 8,017,000 globally, resulting in more than 4,140,000 recoveries and over 436,000 deaths.

On February 11, the WHO officially named the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) as COVID-19, and on March 11, declared it a pandemic.