Health Ministry: Coronavirus kills one person every ten minutes in Iran

Iranian doctors record one death from coronavirus every ten minutes, chief of the PR department at country's Ministry of Health and Medical Education Kianush Jahanpur said.

"With this in mind, I advise taking a conscious decision on travels and meetings during Nowruz," IRNA quotes Jahanpur as saying.

On February 19, the Iranian Health Ministry reported the first cases of new coronavirus in the city of Qom. According to recent official data, 17,361 people are infected with the disease. At least 1,135 have died.

On December 31, 2019, Chinese authorities declared an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan. The infecting agent is a novel coronavirus, officially named COVID-2019.

More than 150 countries have already reported cases of infection.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a coronavirus pandemic on March 11.