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As of 1 March 2020, Iran has reported 987 COVID-19 cases and including 54 associated deaths. At least six neighboring countries (Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Afghanistan and Pakistan) have reported imported COVID-19 cases from Iran. We used air travel data and the cases from Iran to other Middle East countries and estimated 16533 (95% CI: 5925, 35538) COVID-19 cases in Iran by 25 February, before UAE and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries suspended inbound and outbound flights from Iran.
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Zhuang et al. (2020) studied this question.
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