Financial Tribune:   An official with Iran’s Health Ministry has called for serious intervention by authorities to curb coronavirus transmissions, as the country’s large cities reported a third wave of infections. Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi on Tuesday said interventions to stem the spread of the deadly virus should be systematic and any flaw in that system could double the num­ber of deaths in the second year of the epidemic, ISNA reported. Referring to the World Health Organization’s call for global intervention, the deputy said Iran will continue to “observe safe­ty measures, including facemask wearing, contact tracing and carrying out diagnostic tests” to break the chain of transmission. 

Alireza Zali, the head of Tehran’s Coronavirus Taskforce, took one step farther and said “milita­ry intervention” is required during epidemics. “Of course, I do not mean we should treat people violently. But recommendations and suggestions are no longer enough,” Zali said. There is moun­ting concern over the concurrence of the H1N1 and Covid-19 epidemics over the next six months. Pointing to a challenging autumn and winter ahead, Harirchi said the country has be­gun to vaccinate healthcare workers, pregnant women and high-risk groups against influenza. Des­pite the delay in importing flu shots, Health Minister Saeed Namaki reassured the public that they are aiming to vaccine one-fifth of the population.

The Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) announced that the inflation rate in the twel­ve-month period ended on September 21, which marks the end of the sixth Iranian calen­dar month of Shahrivar  stood at 26.0 percent. The inflation rate has grown 0.2 per­­cent in the menti­on­ed time span from the last-months period (25.8%).

The overall CPI (using the Iranian year to March 2017 as the base year) stood at 244.3 for the Ira­­nian month to September 21, indicating a 3.6% rise compared with the month before and 34,4% com­­pared with the similar month of the previous Iranian year.

TEHRAN-TIMES:   Following months of ups and downs, Turkey’s flag carrier Turkish Airlines re­sumed its flights to Tehran on Saturday after six months of suspension over the COVID-19 pan­­demic.

Although according to the schedule, 31 flights per week were to be carried out to Tehran, Shi­raz, Tabriz, Isfahan, and Mashhad, now there will be only seven flights per week between Teh­ran and Istanbul, Alireza Majzubi, an official at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport an­nounced on Saturday. He also noted that the outbound passengers need to hold a health cer­ti­ficate with a negative coronavirus PCR test result, otherwise the boarding pass won’t be is­sued for them.

In late August, Turkish Airlines extended the suspension of its flights to Iran until October 1, reneging on its previous announcement for resuming flights to Tehran and four other cities of Tabriz, Shiraz, Mashhad, and Isfahan as of September 1. Although Turkey resumed flights to ma­ny countries in June and July after few months of suspension over the COVID-19 pandemic, it kept its common borders with Iran closed, while these repeated delays in the reopening Iran-Turkey borders have damaged the tourism ties between the two countries. As Turkey is a coun­try through which many trips of Iranians living abroad and foreign nationals to Iran are made, the flight suspensions prevented several businessmen and students from continuing their acti­vi­ties and even left patients who want to go abroad for further treatment helpless. The pandemic has taken a huge toll on Iran’s civil aviation sector with reports showing that air­lines lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of flight cancellations during the busy New Year travel season in late March.

IRNA – Iran Air will resume flights to Germany as of October 3, Civil Aviation Organization said on Wednesday.

IranAir- Airlines of the Islamic Republic of Iran- will have flight to Frankfurt, large city in Ger­ma­ny, on October 3 after months of delay in international flights due to the December 2019 out­break of the pandemic. CAO Director Touraj Dehghani Zanganeh said that permission to flights have obtained awaiting final confirmation from Germany.

IranAir also will restart flights to Turkey as of September 25. Mahan Air - privately run Iranian air­lines - resumed flights to neighboring country of Turkey on Monday (September 22). Many flights to Europe were postponed after the start of the coronavirus pandemic.