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Hospital paramedics in Iran triage patients on the floors of emergency rooms and in vehicles parked by the roadside. Lines run for blocks outside the pharmacies. Taxis act as hearses, transporting bodies from hospitals to cemeteries. Workers are digging mass graves in at least one city.

Iran is under attack by the most disastrous wave of coronavirus ever, according to interviews with doctors and healthcare workers, social media posts from angry citizens, and even unusually frank reports in state media. The aggressive Delta variant has led to record numbers of deaths and infections and appears to be crushing the healthcare system of a country stricken by Covid-19 since the scourge began.

The final phase of the crisis intensified the challenges faced by Iran’s new hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, who tested his skills just days after taking power.

In Iran’s second largest city, Mashhad, 39-year-old doctor Dr. “The situation we are facing is beyond catastrophic,” said Mahdiar Saeedian. “The health system is on the verge of collapse”

Even during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, born during that conflict, Dr. “It wasn’t like that,” Saeedian said.

The official virus death toll is between 500 and 600 people per day, but even these record high numbers are argued by some government media to be low. Iranian state television said an Iranian dies every two minutes, at least 720 a day.

Frontline doctors in Tehran, Isfahan, Ahvaz and Mashhad told the New York Times that the actual death toll was close to 1,000 a day.

Doctors also say the actual infection rate is much higher than the official rate of around 40,000 a day, due to inadequate testing and lack of access to care.

Medical personnel who were once afraid to be heard are now openly punishing what many Iranians see as gross misconception, incompetence and neglect in the country’s leadership, beginning with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

They are particularly enraged at the shortage of vaccines, which Iranian leaders refuse to buy on time or in sufficient quantity, instead holding out locally developed alternatives that may be too late. They banned vaccines in the United States and Britain, even rejecting donations because they were designed by the West to “contaminate other nations”, Mr Khamenei said.

Less than 3 percent of Iran’s population of 85 million is fully vaccinated.

Nurses in the Covid-19 wards are shown crying on state television. Doctors are posting videos on social media pleading with authorities to act immediately before the crisis gets worse: isolate the country and buy more foreign-made vaccines.

A famous doctor and professor of medicine in Mashhad, Dr. “Whatever your budget, whatever steps you can take, get help from the world, do it to save people,” Nafiseh Saghi pleaded in a voice message posted on social media to Iranian leaders. media. “History will judge you.”

Iranian leaders have repeatedly tried to blame the United States and the country’s long-term economic isolation for a number of internal crises, including the Covid-19 outbreak.

Critics say the leadership has mismanaged the pandemic from the start: hiding accurate data, refusing to order quarantines, criminalizing transparency by healthcare professionals, prioritizing the development of inadequate home-grown vaccines, and misleading the public with excessive promises of vaccines.

Professor of medicine and doctor in the capital Tehran, Dr. “Whoever is wrong must be held to account,” said Muhammad Reza Fallahian. “Our vaccinations are very, very late. What else can we doctors do that we don’t? We are at the breaking point in Iran.”

Tehran’s chairman of the coronavirus committee, Dr. Alireza Zali told Iranian news media on Wednesday in statements that shook many Iranians that authorities do not allow the purchase of foreign vaccines because of the expense.

Dr. Zali said that when World Health Organization experts visited Iran to assess its needs and offer assistance, his superiors ordered medical personnel to show the country as self-sufficient.

They told us to praise Iran’s healthcare system,” he said. “We covered up the actual death toll from WHO and applied for international assistance at the airport.”

In his first week in office, the new president, Mr. Raisi, draws criticism even from his supporters for his refusal to quarantine the country for two weeks at the request of the Ministry of Health and for the lack of vaccinations.

He admitted Wednesday that “that many” doses of domestic vaccines have not yet been produced and that he plans to import at least 40 million doses before winter.

Kianoush Jahanpour, spokesman for Iran’s Food and Drug Administration, promised that an incredibly high 120 million doses of the vaccine would be imported within three months, including the brands Pfizer and Moderna, as long as they are not manufactured in the United States or England.

Mr Khamenei, who is responsible for the rise of Mr Raisi and is believed to see him as a possible successor, said in a televised speech on Wednesday that the pandemic is the country’s top problem. He also said efforts to vaccinate Iranians need to be stepped up and the door to more purchases should be opened from manufacturers in China, Russia and India.

But Khamenei also rejected the Health Ministry’s warnings to cancel ongoing Shia mourning rituals for the holy month of Muharram, when thousands of believers gather in tightly packed and often unmasked, mature incubators to super-spread the virus.

The government’s refusal to impose such restrictions elicited unusually outspoken expressions of anger, even from supporters who risked revenge or at least accusations of infidelity.

“If I say, ‘Mr. Raisi, you are responsible for the increased deaths by not quarantining Tehran while there is no hospital bed, ‘do I count as a counter-revolutionary? Tehran resident Mehdi Sasani, who voted for Mr. Raisi, Twitter post.

Mr. Sasani described the ordeal his family went through in fighting the virus, from not being able to find a hospital bed to wandering from pharmacy to pharmacy for hours looking for prescription drugs. He said that people queuing for health and medicine cursed Khamenei.

“We are officially facing a situation without government,” said computer programmer Hamidreza Salehi. Twitter posting. “They’ve lost control of everything.”

Despite the devastation of the latest virus wave, pictures and videos from Iran mostly show business as usual on the streets. Offices, shops and restaurants are open at full capacity. There were no restrictions on masking, travel or social distancing. Exhausted by the pressures of a weak economy, the epidemic, and government distrust, many people do not follow the proposed protocols.

Iraj Harirchi, deputy health minister, said last week that Iran’s death rate will rise by six weeks, according to estimates by international agencies. Almost all of Iran’s 31 provinces have been labeled “red”, the highest level of risk under Iran’s warning system.

In what appeared to be a concession to medical critics, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful paramilitary force reporting directly to Khamenei, said Thursday that regional commanders will take steps to help prevent unrestricted human movement across the country. Details on how such restrictions will work remain unclear.

A mother in Tehran, whose 13-year-old son has contracted Covid-19, said she couldn’t find a hospital bed when her respiratory symptoms worsened, and doctors who made home visits at high prices said there was no place open for days. He said he waited outside the pharmacy 24/7 from midnight to 3am to get prescription antiviral drugs.

Ehsan Badaghi, journalist for the Iranian government newspaper, said in an interview that her next-door neighbor, 43, mother of two young children, died a few days ago while waiting for an ambulance. He said the woman could not find a hospital bed and could not afford home care services.

“Vaccination or quarantine needs both money and planning, and none of it happens here,” he said. “So the epidemic is getting worse and will continue to get worse. We’re dying and nobody cares.”

According to interviews with doctors from four cities, critical medical treatments such as intravenous fluids, oxygen tanks and antiviral drugs are inadequate in hospitals and pharmacies and sold at exorbitant prices on the black market.

A 43-year-old psychiatrist in Tehran, Dr. Ali Nikjoo said that the medical staff are also physically tired and emotionally exhausted as they work double shifts in hospitals without a break. He said he received numerous phone calls from colleagues who struggled with depression, anxiety and grief.

Dr. “Medical personnel walk through a minefield every day,” said Zakani. “There is an overwhelming sense of abandonment, not only among doctors and nurses, but also among ordinary people. We swim and we drown.”