Tehran
An outbreak of swine flu has left 33 people dead in two provinces of southwestern Iran in the last three weeks, the official IRNA news agency reported on Monday.
IRNA quoted Deputy Health Minister Ali Akbar Sayyari as saying there had been 28 deaths in Kerman province and five in Sistan-Baluchistan and warning the H1N1 virus was likely to spread to other areas including the capital Tehran.
"The health ministry predicts that the virus will spread in the coming days to Tehran, West and East Azerbaijan and Kermanshah provinces more than to other places," he said.
Nearly 600 people have been hospitalised in Kerman province over the outbreak, the head of the province's medical university, Ali Akbar Haghdoost, told the ISNA news agency.
"Traces of the H1N1 virus were uncovered three weeks ago and we were the first province to report the epidemic," Haghdoost said.
He called for limited travel during a three-day holiday weekend due to start on Thursday in order to prevent the spread of the virus.
A major H1N1 outbreak in 2009 sparked a World Health Organization pandemic alert in June 2009, after the virus emerged from Mexico and the United States.
The alert was lifted in August 2010 and the outbreak left some 18,500 people dead in 214 countries.
