TEHRAN – The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has delivered a number of locally procured hygiene items to address the needs of vulnerable children in Iran during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Hygiene items include 30,000 hand sanitizers, 12,000 sanitizing gels, 30,000 liquid hand soaps, 11,988 sanitary pads, 33,000 detergent powder, 33,000 dishwashing liquid as well as 300,000 masks.

The items are being dispatched to 31 cities in six provinces of Sistan-Baluchestan, Kordestan, Kermanshah, Kerman, Khuzestan, and Hormozgan where local NGOs and municipalities will help deliver them to vulnerable groups of children including children without effective caregivers, children in alternative care centers, children with cancer and special diseases, children in a street situation, children in low-income families, children with disabilities, as well as at-risk children.

------------- ECHO allocates €8m to help counter pandemic in Iran

An 8-million-euro contribution from the European Commission's Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) is allocated to the UN and its partner Relief International in Iran to support the management and control of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to mitigate its impact on the most vulnerable communities with a focus on most at-risk children, adolescents, and young people.

The ECHO fund is allocated to UNDP, UNFPA, UNAIDS, UNICEF, and Relief International to support their COVID-19 operations in Iran with UNICEF as a convening agency for this joint program.

UNICEF will spend the ECHO fund to procure COVID-19 lifesaving health and diagnosis equipment for the relevant government entities and enhance WASH and Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) standards among schools especially in less developed provinces to ensure their readiness for the reopening.

The fund will also be used to mitigate the adverse COVID-19 mental health and psychosocial effects through the production of stigma-free information and communication material as well as exclusive psychosocial counseling tailored to the needs of the at-risk community including children and adolescents.

Using the ECHO fund, UNICEF will also be working with the Government on the provision of COVID-19 exclusive educational material, protocols, and standards to the healthcare providers, social and mental health workers, child-care center workers as well as teachers to enhance their capacity for improved services to children during the pandemic.

---------COVID-19 mortality hit daily record in Iran

In the press briefing on Wednesday, Health Ministry spokesperson Sima-Sadat Lari confirmed 4,830 new cases of COVID-19 infection, raising the total number of infections to 513,219. She added that 414,831 patients have so far recovered, but 4,609 still remain in critical conditions of the disease.

In the past 24 hours, 279 patients have lost their lives, bringing the total number of deaths to 29,349, she added.

Lari noted that so far 4,398,723 COVID-19 tests have been conducted across the country.

She said the high-risk “red” zones include provinces of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom, East Azerbaijan, South Khorasan, Semnan, Qazvin, Lorestan, Ardabil, Khuzestan, Kermanshah, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Gilan, Bushehr, Zanjan, Ilam, Khorasan Razavi, Mazandaran, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Alborz, West Azerbaijan, Markazi, Kerman, North Khorasan, Hamedan and Yazd.

The provinces of Kordestan, Hormozgan, Fars, and Golestan are also on alert.

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