First Cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Iran, 2020: Case Series Report
Jila Yavarian, Nazanin Zahra Shafiei Jandaghi, Kaveh Sadeghi, Somayeh Shatizadeh Malekshahi, Vahid Salimi, Ahmad Nejati, Fatemeh Ajaminejad, Nastaran Ghavvami, Fatemeh Saadatmand, Saeedeh Mahfouzi, Ghazal Fatemi-Nasab, Najmeh Parhizgari, Kobra Razavi Pashabeyg, Soad Ghabeshi, Mostafa Saberian, Elham Zanjani, Fatemeh Namazi, Tayebeh SHAHBAZI, Farshid REZAIE, Hossein ERFANI, Mohammad Mehdí Gouya, Mohammad Nasr Dadras, Talat Mokhtari‐Azad
Abstract
In Jan 2020, the outbreak of the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China spread increasingly to other countries worldwide which WHO declared it as a public health emergency of international concern. Iran was included in the affected countries. Throat swab specimens were collected and tested by using real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) kit targeting the E region for screening and RNA dependent RNA polymerase for confirmation. Conventional RT-PCR was conducted for the N region and the PCR products were sequenced by Sanger sequencing. The first seven cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections were identified in Qom, Iran. This report describes the clinical and epidemiological features of the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 confirmed in Iran. Future research should focus on finding the routes of transmission for this virus, including the possibility of transmission from foreign tourists to identify the possible origin of SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Iran.