Tehran: Iran said on Thursday that it has sought financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund, which has not lent it money since 1962, to help it combat the novel coronavirus.
"Our central bank requested access" to the IMF's Rapid Financing Instrument (RFI), Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter, urging the fund's board to respond to the request "responsibly".
"IMF has stated that countries affected by COVID19 will be supported via Rapid Financial Instrument. Our Central Bank requested access to this facility immediately," he tweeted.
In Iran, by far the hardest-hit country in the Middle East, the senior vice president and two other Cabinet ministers were reported to have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. Iran reported another jump in deaths, by 62 to 354 — behind only China and Italy.
More than 126,000 people in more than 110 countries have been infected. But WHO emphasised the vast majority are in just four countries: China and South Korea where new cases are declining and Iran and Italy, where they are not.
Outside of Iran, only Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon have recorded deaths from the virus in the Middle East.
Read: WHO declares virus crisis a pandemic
In the Gulf Arab island nation of Bahrain, authorities said that their number of confirmed cases on Wednesday spiked by nearly 70% to 189 confirmed cases. The 77 new cases were all on a returning flight of Bahraini evacuees from Iran.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic and urged aggressive action from all countries to fight it adding that Iran and Italy are the new front lines of the fight against the virus that started in China.
(With inputs from AFP)
