The long list of high-ranking Iranian government officials who have contracted the coronavirus has just gotten longer: Iranian media announced on Thursday that Masoumeh Ebtekar, the current Vice President of Iran for Women and Family Affairs, tested positive for the coronavirus.
Ironically, Ebtekar was elected as the President of the 12th International Congress of Immunology in 2013. Not so ironically, she first came to prominence as the spokesperson for the students in the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, when the students occupied the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Ebtekar was identified only with the codename “Sister Mary.” She appeared on U.S. and British television justifying the seizure of the embassy and saying that she was prepared to kill American hostages
Iran is the hardest-hit country by the coronavirus outside of China, with the government announcing that 12 people had died from the virus and an additional 61 infections had been diagnosed.
Iranian authorities announced on Thursday that the death toll in the country from coronavirus stood at 26 with 245 identified cases.