Iran said it would allow "low-risk" economic activities to resume from Saturday, April 11, as its daily coronavirus infection rates slowed for a fifth day in a row.
"Restarting these activities does not mean we have abandoned the principle of staying at home," President Hassan Rouhani said at a meeting of the anti-coronavirus task force.
The president, whose country has been battered by US sanctions, did not specify what qualified as "low-risk" activities, but said bans would remain on schools and large gatherings.
A gradual return of low-risk economic activity will be permitted from Saturday in the provinces and from April 18 in Tehran, Mr Rouhani said.
The coronavirus pandemic claimed another 151 lives over the past 24 hours in Iran, raising the country’s declared death toll to 3,603, health ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said on Sunday.
Mr Jahanpour also reported 2,483 new cases of Covid-19 infection, compared to a record number of 3,111 new infections on March 31.
Iran, the Middle East country worst affected by the pandemic, has reported 58,226 infections, a figure that some foreign experts suspect is an underestimate.
After resisting a lockdown or quarantine measures, Iran imposed an intercity travel ban late last month.
Last Saturday should have marked a return to regular activity in Iran after a two-week holiday for the Persian New Year.
Mr Jahanpour criticised "those who think that the situation is normal now that the holidays are over, because it is not normal".
While some people in Tehran said they were reassured by the government's response, others remained fearful.
"There have been a lot of people out on the streets the last two days. It's terrifying," homemaker Zohreh said.
But Zahra Zanjani, another homemaker, said she believed the situation was under control.
"People are very respectful" of instructions from authorities, "and are taking great care", she said.
A retiree named Amir worried about the economic effects of the pandemic.
"People still have expenses to pay," Amir said.
"They can't stay at home. The government needs to support them financially."
In Isfahan, Iran's third largest city and tourism capital, teacher Samira, 35, said many people were ignoring advice to stay home.
"I passed by two parks and saw 25 to 30 people in each," she said. "Public gardens are supposed to remain closed."
Pharaoh's curse
British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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