Iranian officials have released tens of thousands of prisoners to try to halt the spread of the deadly coronavirus through the country's overcrowded jails.
About 54,000 prisoners were released on bail after testing negative for COVID-19 and were not "security prisoners" sentenced to five years or more in prison.
The outbreak has now claimed 77 lives in Iran and infected more than 2,300 people across the country in multiple cities.
Hopes were raised that those temporarily freed would include jailed British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after a British MP cited Iran's Ambassador to the United Kingdom saying she may be released on furlough today or tomorrow.
But the ambassador, Hamid Baeidinejad, later clarified that Iran's government had said an unnamed "security prisoner" would be released but the reference to Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was "an interpretation".
He added that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is serving a five-year prison sentence for espionage, was in good health and does not have coronavirus.
There were no indications that jailed Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert will be among those freed. SBS News has asked the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade whether the academic's situation will be affected.
UN health officials on Tuesday said the virus was now "well-established" in Iran, warning that a lack of protective gear for healthcare workers was complicating efforts to control the outbreak.
"It is not an easy situation," Michael Ryan, who heads the World Health Organization's emergencies programme, told reporters in Geneva.
"Like in some other countries, the disease is now well-established," he said.
Mr Ryan said rooting out the virus in countries where it has become established "is not impossible" but "it is difficult".
Iranian health ministry photo shows laborers unloading medical equipment and coronavirus testing kits provided by the World Health Organisation. Source: IRAN HEALTH MINISTRY
"Doctors and nurses have concerns that they do not necessarily have enough equipment, supplies, ventilators, respirators, oxygen," he said of Iran.
The WHO said on Tuesday that supplies of protective gear worldwide were rapidly depleting, threatening the overall response to the outbreak, which has killed more than 3,100 people, mostly in China.
But the problem is particularly serious in Iran.
"Those needs are more acute for the Iranian health system then they are for most any other health system," Mr Ryan said.
In a first step towards addressing the problem, a WHO team of experts arrived in Iran on Monday to help with the response, bringing with them medical supplies and enough laboratory kits to test roughly 100,000 people.
Iran has shut schools and universities, suspended major cultural and sporting events and cut back on work hours in response to the outbreak.
On Tuesday, it announced another 11 deaths and 835 new infections, the biggest increase in a single day since the COVID-19 outbreak began nearly two weeks ago.
National emergency services chief Pirhossein Kolivand was the latest high-profile official to contract the illness, a spokesman for the services told AFP.
Mohammad Mirmohammadi, 72, a member of the Expediency Council which advises Iran's supreme leader, died from the virus this week, according to Tasnim news agency.
The country's deputy health minister Iraj Harirchi fell ill with COVID-19 last week.
Mr Ryan said that while the spike in numbers could appear to be a very bad thing, it reflected "a more aggressive approach to surveillance and case detection".
"Things tend to look worse before they get better," he said, adding: "You have to find your problem, you have to recognise your problem and then deal with your problem."
