TEHRAN, March 2. /TASS/. Mohammad Mirmohammadi, a member of the Iranian Expediency Discernment Council, died on Monday, Fars agency informed.

No exact cause of death is stated. The agency points out that earlier, the official was diagnosed with coronavirus. On March 1, he was taken to one of Tehran’s hospitals.

Mirmohammadi was 72 years old. He was elected member of the Iranian parliament twice from the province of Qom.

On February 19, the Iranian Health Ministry reported first cases of novel coronavirus in the country in the city of Qom. According to official data, there are 978 cases of COVID-19 in Iran, with at least 54 recorded deaths.

In late December 2019, Chinese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about an outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, central China. According to Chinese authorities, over 80,026 people have been infected with the virus in the country. The death toll has reached 2,912, while over 44,400 patients have recovered. WHO declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus a global health emergency and named the virus COVID-19. Cases of coronavirus have been reported in 65 countries, including Russia. The largest outbreaks of COVID-19 outside of China have been detected in South Korea and Italy.