TEHRAN, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian health ministry on Saturday reported 18,230 new COVID-19 cases, taking the country's total infections to 2,377,039.
The pandemic has so far claimed 69,120 lives in Iran, up by 374 in the past 24 hours, the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education said in a written briefing published on its official website.
A total of 1,863,405 people have recovered from the disease or been discharged from hospitals across the country, while 5,156 remain in intensive care units, according to the note.
The ministry said 15,078,540 tests have so far been carried out across the country.
By Saturday, 584,736 people have received the first doses of coronavirus vaccines and 157,258 the second doses.
The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Iran went up by 17 percent during the past seven days, Sima Sadat Lari, the ministry's spokeswoman, said on Saturday in an interview with the ministry's official online outlet.
"The average incidence of hospitalization last week was 28.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, and the highest incidence of hospitalization in the country was recorded in the provinces of Hamadan, Ilam, Semnan, Lorestan, and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari," she noted.
Also on Saturday, the Iranian interior minister issued a ban on "all freight and passenger traffic with India, direct or indirect," given the surge in COVID-19 cases in the country, official IRNA news agency reported.
Currently, Iran implements restrictions on businesses and travels in high-risk areas amid a new wave of the virus spread in the country.
Iran reported first cases of the disease in February 2020. Enditem