Will India ban people coming from Middle East countries who have recently visited IRAN?

Spiritual pilgrims, migratory workers, businessmen, armed forces and clerics often travel across Iran’s frontiers. Crossing into these countries is quite common as they have few border controls, frail and ineffectual governments and weak health systems.

Currently, as Iran struggles to manage the spread of the coronavirus, it is also evolving as the second focal point after China for the spread of the disease.

Cases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and even one in Canada, all have been traced to Iran.

The Middle East is in several ways a perfect place to seed a pandemic, with the constant circulation of both Muslim pilgrims and traveling workers who might carry the virus. 

Iran’s economy has been strangulated by authorizations, its people have lost trust in their government and their leaders are isolated far from the rest of the world, providing very little clarity about the extent of the epidemic.

Civil wars and years of turmoil have shattered the health systems of several neighboring countries, like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.  Most of the region is been governed predominantly by authoritarians with poor track records in providing public transparency, responsibility and health facilities.

Many pilgrimages from Middle East countries are still visiting IRAN. 

Iran did not disclose the hot spot of corona in time to the WHO. The cases were only detected when people started dying. Today we have 245 infected cases and 26 deaths in IRAN. The cases are under reported as 1- 2% (outside China) is the fatality rate and 26 deaths would mean at least 1300- 2600 cases in Iran.

People till that time thought IRAN to be a safe place and continued visiting the holy areas in IRAN and carried the infections in many Middle East countries.

Bahrain is a small country with half the population size of south Delhi and alone has 33 positive cases. 

Afghanistan is also a country with weak health care system. Many Afghanis are coming to India daily on health visa and many of them come via Iran. It is likely many of them would carry the virus to India.

Even Pakistan Medical Association is worried about Afghanis coming with eh virus.   Prof Ashraf Nizami the First VP CMAAO wrote that “These two are confirmed cases, with travel history from Iran, one is in Karachi and the other in Islamabad. Chinese working in Pakistan were under strict surveillance after their return to Pakistan having New Year celebrations at home. None was found positive for COVID – 19. Pakistan has closed its border with Iran, which is 900 KM, but we have a second threat of 1300 KM border with Afghanistan. Mostly Pak Afghan border is porous one, one of the main reasons of uncontrolled Polio virus in Pakistan. 

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran had no plans to quarantine any of its "cities and districts" in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Iraq had banned all public meetings and banned travelers from Kuwait and Bahrain from entry. The total number of countries on the entry ban list is nine due to increasing fears over the spread of the coronavirus. The nine countries in the entry ban list are: China, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Bahrain and Kuwait.

Will India ban people coming from Middle East countries who have recently visited IRAN?

Saudi Arabia has temporarily stopped the entry of pilgrims that are entering the country to visit holy sites, to slow the spread of coronavirus.

The Saudi government has also said that it would suspend the visas for Muslims who are seeking to visit Mecca and Medina.

Dr KK Aggarwal

President CMAAO, HCFI and Past National President IMA