TEHRAN – Tehran mayor Pirouz Hanachi and Seoul mayor Park Won-soon shared their experiences on fighting coronavirus in an online meeting on Monday.

“Global crises are only managed by global solutions, and there will be no common solution without constructive communication; about the requirements of the battle against Coronavirus. Tehran and Seoul do not leave each other alone on this path,” Hanachi wrote on his Twitter account on Tuesday.

The Tehran mayor said that there are no more difficult conditions in Iran like the very first days of the outbreak, and in some cities, the situation of coronavirus has turned white, and the number of patients and deaths has greatly decreased.

Iran has been infected with the virus since February 20, but before Tehran, other cities became involved with the epidemic.

Lamenting that Iran was fighting two issues of coronavirus and sanctions, Hanachi stated that initially, due to sanctions, the country's ability to deal with the pandemic was limited, so that only two laboratories could test and detect the disease, but now 60 related laboratories testing the virus.

Pointing to the public transport fleet in Tehran, he said that due to the social distancing plan, the municipality is currently under a lot of pressure in the field of public transport, however, 1,500 subway cars, 5,000 buses, and 60,000 taxis are disinfected daily.

Referring to other measures taken by the municipality to deal with the epidemic, he noted that “Although quarantine is not applied in Tehran, many jobs and some public places such as parks are shot down to prevent the spread, even religious centers, and shrines in different cities of Iran.” 

He emphasized that Tehran Municipality also carried out a projection mapping on the iconic Azadi Tower to convey the message of sympathy with the people fighting coronavirus worldwide, which faced a positive response from the countries.

Hanachi also referred to the burial of coronavirus deaths in Tehran and saying that "Tehran Municipality has tried to bury the dead in compliance with all the health standards of the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health and to respect the health of the survivors while considering the emotional state of the families.

The onset of the epidemic coincided with the Iranian New Year (Noruz), and this helped Iran reduce the number of people in the city, while the people also well cooperated, and resisted to camp in the gardens on the Nature Day (April 1), he said.

Hanachi further expressed appreciation to South Korea and Seoul for their assistance to Iran in dealing with the crisis and called on Won-soon to convey Tehran's message to the world in the Metropolitan Council meetings and the Korean government that Iran is combating two issues of coronavirus and sanctions.

Transparency, South Korea's major principle

Won-soon for his part stressed the need to share the experiences of all corona-affected countries to combat the virus, adding, from the very beginning, South Korea was transparent with statistics.

When the first cases identified, it has extensively tested the people to determine the exact number of patients, which has led to a significant decrease in the number of patients over the following days, to the point that the number of patients has reached about 10 per day, he explained.

Pointing to the sanctions amid coronavirus crisis, he said that South Korea understands Iran’s situation and has tried its best to help Tehran in this regard.

South Korea experienced the spread of SARS a few years ago so that used the experience of those days to combat the current epidemic, and those actions have led to a significant drop in the number of infections and death toll, he highlighted.

Seoul has reported 600 infections and only 2 deaths death due to the virus, one of the measures was keeping elderly people away from potentially infected areas, he added.

There was also the issue of social distancing and quarantine in Korea; although Korean officials did not quarantine cities, some jobs were closed and efforts were made to reduce traffic in the city, he stated.

However, it was concurrent with Korea's cherry blossom season and people liked to go sightseeing, they were asked not to do so, and they did, he also said.

In Korea, a system was launched for constantly monitoring the situation of coronavirus in different countries and providing successful experiences in this field, which you can use to transfer your experiences, he concluded.

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