At least two top officials and two members of Iran's parliament have contracted the disease, which has a reported mortality rate of 11 percent in Iran.
The head of Medical Science University in Qom, Mohammad Reza Ghadir, said on state television that the Health Ministry had banned releasing figures on the outbreak in the city.
Outside medical experts said reporting on the total number of cases of infection in Iran was possibly lagging behind reporting on deaths. That could be because Iranian authorities are missing less severe cases across the country because of how they are testing and diagnosing patients, because of how information is shared or because of flawed medical equipment.
It's unclear whether Iran has the ability to find out how many people have been infected, which would require venturing out to towns and villages to conduct tests and not simply relying on who goes to large hospitals with severe symptoms, said, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Another possibility is that the patients are from an elderly, more vulnerable part of the population, Schaffner said.
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