Iraj Harirchi Tabrizi (Persian: ایرج حریرچی تبریزی; born 1966) is an Iranian politician and surgeon. He is the lecturer at Tehran University of Medical Sciences at Tehran Cancer Institute. He is working as the deputy minister of Health and Medical Education.
Iraj Harirchi Tabrizi | |
|---|---|
| ایرج حریرچی تبریزی | |
 | |
| Director of National Center for Fight with Coronavirus | |
| Assumed office 24 February 2020 | |
| President | Hassan Rouhani Ebrahim Raisi |
| Deputy Minister of Health | |
| Assumed office 22 October 2014 | |
| President | Hassan Rouhani Ebrahim Raisi |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1966 (age 57–58) Tabriz, Iran |
2020 COVID-19 outbreak
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, on 25 February, Harirchi announced that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and had self-quarantined.[1] Just the day before, parliamentarian Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani's claimed that 50 people had died in Qom from COVID-19, which Harirchi denied.[2] At the press conference, Harirchi was coughing and sweating.[3] On 12 March, Saeed Namaki noted that Iraj Harirchi had fully recovered from the virus.[4]
During the COVID-19 pandemic he said that Iran opposed quarantines, because they belonged to an era before the First World War – "to the plague, cholera, stuff like that".[5] This statement was met with much criticism in universities as well as in social media.[6]