Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe thought to have contracted coronavirus in Iran prison, says husband

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman detained in Iran, has contracted suspected novel coronavirus, her husband has said.

“The prison is avoiding confirming whether Nazanin has coronavirus – but I would be surprised if she doesn’t. There are enough symptoms, and the authorities are just too reluctant to see,” Richard Ratcliffe said.

“A lack of transparency can cost lives – this is true in so many aspects of our case as four years of game playing have shown.”

The Free Nazanin Campaign said Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe also believed she had contracted the virus, which has caused thousands of deaths globally since its outbreak in central China last month.

“I am not good. I feel very bad in fact. It is a strange cold. Not like usual. I know the kinds of cold I normally have, how my body reacts. This is different. I am just as bad as I was. I often get better after three days. But with this there is no improvement. I haven’t got one bit better,” Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe told the campaign.

“It has been a sore throat for days now. Really bad. It is now more than five days – with a severe sore throat that is not going away.

“At the beginning I had a runny nose and a cough. Now I have this continual cold sweat. I have a temperature, though not all the time. The past couple of days I have been shivering every night. I have also had nausea – feeling like I am about to vomit, though I do not.

“I have difficulty breathing and pain in my muscles, and fatigue. I do not pant, but I am finding it hard to breathe. And I am just very, very tired. I have real tiredness and a heavy head. I am too tired to do anything.

“For a long time this has not felt like a normal cold. These symptoms have lasted almost a week. I know I need to get medicine to get better. This does not go magically.”

More than 85,000 people worldwide have been infected with coronavirus. Most of the 2,850 deaths have been in China, where the outbreak began last year.

An Iranian health ministry spokesman said the virus had killed 43 people in the Islamic Republic, with 593 confirmed cases.

However, officials in Iran’s health system told the BBC that at least 210 people have died as a result of the illness. The authorities have previously been accused of a cover-up and the US has expressed concern that they may not be sharing information.

There have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus in Evin prison, though the Free Nazanin Campaign said it was implementing special measures, such as bans on face to face prison visits by family members.

On Friday, Mr Ratcliffe called on Boris Johnson to take action on securing his wife’s release, adding she already suffered from other medical conditions as a “direct consequence of her time in prison”.

Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who has been imprisoned in Tehran since 2016, experiences “unexplained collapses to irregular heartbeats, to strange incapacities in her neck and arms,” her husband said.

The 42-year-old was convicted of spying, despite Tehran failing to provide evidence for the charge.