The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China at the end of 2019, and soon spread to the rest of China and overseas (Bogoch et al., 2020). At the time of writing, 78 630 cases had been reported in China and 3664 cases had been confirmed in 46 other countries (World Health Organization, 2020). Iran has recently become an epicenter in the Middle East region and has seen the largest cumulative number of deaths outside China (Wikipedia, 2020). As of March 1, 2020, Iran had confirmed 987 COVID-19 cases, including 54 associated deaths (Wikipedia, 2020).