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Tehran Scrambles for Hospital Beds

An emergency medical staff member sits in an ambulance while transferring a patient with coronavirus to Masih Daneshvari Hospital, in Tehran, March 30. WANA/Ali Khara via REUTERS
An emergency medical staff member sits in an ambulance while transferring a patient with coronavirus to Masih Daneshvari Hospital, in Tehran, March 30. WANA/Ali Khara via REUTERS
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Tehran Scrambles for Hospital Beds

An emergency medical staff member sits in an ambulance while transferring a patient with coronavirus to Masih Daneshvari Hospital, in Tehran, March 30. WANA/Ali Khara via REUTERS
An emergency medical staff member sits in an ambulance while transferring a patient with coronavirus to Masih Daneshvari Hospital, in Tehran, March 30. WANA/Ali Khara via REUTERS

Tehran ambulances carrying COVID-19 patients go from hospital to hospital in search of available beds, a physician said on Thursday as the country recorded a daily high of 4,392 new cases.

Authorities have been warning for days of severe shortages of hospital beds during a third wave of infections that has hit the capital Tehran the hardest.

“Due to the unavailability of beds in intensive care units and even in emergency units, ambulances go from one hospital to another to have patients admitted,” the official IRINN news site quoted the head of infectious diseases at the Masih Daneshvari Hospital in Tehran as saying.

“Newly-arriving coronavirus patients have to wait for beds to become free,” said the physician, according to Reuters.

The Health Ministry registered new 230 deaths, taking the total toll to 27,888. The total number of identified cases stand at 488,236, ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari told state TV.

From Saturday, face masks will become mandatory in public in the capital Tehran. Masks have already been compulsory in public indoors since July, and will now be required outdoors in Tehran as well. State media reports say many people have flouted the regulation.

Schools, libraries, mosques and other public institutions in Tehran closed for a week on Oct. 3 as part of measures to stem the rapid rise in COVID-19 cases.

The closure also affect universities, seminaries, libraries, museums, theatres, gyms, cafes and hair salons in the capital.

Alireza Zali, head of the Tehran Coronavirus Taskforce, on Thursday asked the Health Minister to extend the closures in the capital for at least another week.

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US Agency Focused on Foreign Disinformation Shuts Down

The State Department's Global Engagement Center has faced scrutiny and criticism from Republican lawmakers and Elon Musk. Mandel NGAN / AFP
The State Department's Global Engagement Center has faced scrutiny and criticism from Republican lawmakers and Elon Musk. Mandel NGAN / AFP
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US Agency Focused on Foreign Disinformation Shuts Down

The State Department's Global Engagement Center has faced scrutiny and criticism from Republican lawmakers and Elon Musk. Mandel NGAN / AFP
The State Department's Global Engagement Center has faced scrutiny and criticism from Republican lawmakers and Elon Musk. Mandel NGAN / AFP

A leading US government agency that tracks foreign disinformation has terminated its operations, the State Department said Tuesday, after Congress failed to extend its funding following years of Republican criticism.
The Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit established in 2016, shuttered on Monday at a time when officials and experts tracking propaganda have been warning of the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China, AFP reported.
"The State Department has consulted with Congress regarding next steps," it said in a statement when asked what would happen to the GEC's staff and its ongoing projects following the shutdown.
The GEC had an annual budget of $61 million and a staff of around 120. Its closing leaves the State Department without a dedicated office for tracking and countering disinformation from US rivals for the first time in eight years.
A measure to extend funding for the center was stripped out of the final version of the bipartisan federal spending bill that passed through the US Congress last week.
The GEC has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who accused it of censoring and surveilling Americans.
It also came under fire from Elon Musk, who accused the GEC in 2023 of being the "worst offender in US government censorship [and] media manipulation" and called the agency a "threat to our democracy."
The GEC's leaders have pushed back on those views, calling their work crucial to combating foreign propaganda campaigns.
Musk had loudly objected to the original budget bill that would have kept GEC funding, though without singling out the center. The billionaire is an advisor to President-elect Donald Trump and has been tapped to run the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with reducing government spending.
In June, James Rubin, special envoy and coordinator for the GEC, announced the launch of a multinational group based in Warsaw to counter Russian disinformation on the war in neighboring Ukraine.
The State Department said the initiative, known as the Ukraine Communications Group, would bring together partner governments to coordinate messaging, promote accurate reporting of the war and expose Kremlin information manipulation.
In a report last year, the GEC warned that China was spending billions of dollars globally to spread disinformation and threatening to cause a "sharp contraction" in freedom of speech around the world.