This really isn't surprising, given that Iran has easily had the most publicly acknowledged infections and deaths amongst high government officials (mostly in February and March).
What is incredibly surprising is that the first death occurred on January 22nd. Given that estimates of the time from initial exposure to ultimate death are in the range are 17 to 21 days, this indicates initial exposure or someone who died in Iran to have occurred somewhere between January 1st and 5th. This addresses one of the huge riddles about the early course of COVID-19: given the large commercial connections between China and Iran, someone in Iran should've gotten sicker sooner than late February. Smoking gun confirmed.
Anyway, the BBC has published and official internal count leaked from Iran's government that differs from the publicly available, external official count.
The government's own records appear to show almost 42,000 people died with Covid-19 symptoms up to 20 July, versus 14,405 reported by its health ministry.
The number of people known to be infected is also almost double official figures: 451,024 as opposed to 278,827.
Due note that up until this time, that publicly available, external official count has shown for months that Iran has the worst outbreak in their region. The new numbers are worse.
The chart shows the new and old figures.
Iran has already been transparent that they are in a second wave that is worse than the first.
The data appears to be legit:
The data was sent to the BBC by an anonymous source.
It includes details of daily admissions to hospitals across Iran, including names, age, gender, symptoms, date and length of periods spent in hospital, and underlying conditions patients might have.
The details on lists correspond to those of some living and deceased patients already known to the BBC.
The BBC also makes clear that the undercount does not appear to be the result of innocent mistakes:
A level of undercounting, largely due to testing capacity, is seen across the world, but the information leaked to the BBC reveals Iranian authorities have reported significantly lower daily numbers despite having a record of all deaths - suggesting they were deliberately suppressed.
Due note that these new figures are smaller than the estimates that the dissident groups PMOI/MEK have been publishing for months.
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