The first mention by the Iranian government of the disease’s arrival in the country was a report of two deaths in Qum on Feb. 19. The first victim is believed to be an Iranian businessman who had traveled to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus was first detected. A doctor in Qum is believed to be the second Iranian victim. They are feared to have been sick and infecting others, from their family members to friends and colleagues, for weeks before their deaths.

The contagion spread to all of Iran’s 31 provinces. Pilgrims from several countries who had visited Qum were found to be infected. On Feb. 24, officials from the health ministry announced that there were 64 cases in the country and that 12 people had died from the outbreak. Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, a member of Parliament from Qum, contradicted the official accounts and told an Iranian news agency that 50 people in the city were already dead.

The official response was glaring denial of the magnitude of the crisis. Iraj Harirchi, the deputy minister of health, denied Mr. Farahani’s allegation and promised to resign if the death toll proved to be even one fourth of his claim. A day later, Mr. Harirchi himself tested positive for the coronavirus, and is under quarantine.

By that time, the fourth week of February, it became evident that a disproportionate number of members of Parliament and senior government officials were infected. Iranian politicians and officials travel frequently between Tehran and Qum, and it is most likely that one of them contracted the virus in Qum and infected colleagues in Tehran, where the newly elected Parliament was in session.

Iranians have a culture of greeting each other by kissing the other person on the cheeks. Politicians often overdo it to show their closeness to power players. In this particular moment, the greeting could have transmitted the virus.

We learned of the officials being infected early on because Tehran made the welfare of the elite a priority and moved them to the front of the line for testing.

Even doctors and medical staff members at the smaller government hospitals were not alerted to take precautions until after the number of cases started to increase rapidly. The results of a test of a nurse from a small village in Geelan province were communicated a week after her death.