Tehran, March 17 (IANS): Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education on Tuesday announced that the number of COVID-19 cases in the country has climbed to 16,169 with the death toll reaching 988, Xinhua reported.

A total of 5,389 people have recovered, Kianush Jahanpur, head of Public Relations and Information Center of the ministry was quoted as saying by the IRNA news agency.

Meanwhile, Iran's health minister Saeed Namaki said that by Monday 14 million people had been screened for coronavirus symptoms as part of a national plan to curb the pandemic, Press TV reported on Tuesday.

Namaki said that a significant number of those people were screened via the health ministry's online platform and the rest through phone calls, electronic health dossiers and online health screening systems run by the ministry.

"Out of the 14 million monitored for the coronavirus infection, 73,435 had symptoms. After evaluations, 3,415 of them were referred to hospitals, out of whom 1,605 were hospitalized and the remaining were either discharged with prescriptions or sent to other centres," he said.