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Confirmed coronavirus cases in Afghanistan have passed 4,000 following the highest one-day rise in infections in the country’s third largest city, Herat.

Six patients died overnight, increasing the Covid-19 death toll in the country to 115, with the total number of infections reaching 4,033, including 392 health workers. Six health workers have died from Covid-19.

Of the new infections, 71 were recorded in the western province of Herat, which borders Iran. More than 250,000 Afghans have returned home from Iran – which has recorded in excess of 100,000 confirmed cases – since the beginning of the year, fanning out across the country without being tested or quarantined.

Afghanistan’s health ministry has warned of a human catastrophe amid intensified conflict with the Taliban, which killed 43 civilians in the first 10 days of Ramadan.

Wahid Majroh, a deputy health minister, said on Saturday that a “big human catastrophe will take place” if people continued to break lockdown rules, adding that concerns had reached the “highest level”.

Despite a government-authorised lockdown in several provinces, cities are still crowded, raising fears among experts that the true number of Covid-19 infections may be significantly higher than official figures.

Some 529 suspected patients have been tested in the last 24 hours in the war-torn country, with 253 positive results. The deputy health minister insisted that patients with severe symptoms were tested, adding that the ministry is increasing hospital beds for Covid-19 patients.

Ferozuddin Feroz, the health minister, who was infected with the virus on Thursday, is in a “good condition”, Majroh said.

After three days of recording numbers below 20 in Kandahar, the number of transmissions increased in the southern province as 43 patients tested positive. The capital, Kabul, which is Afghanistan’s worst-affected area, recorded four new patients with Covid-19 out of 43 tests, Majroh said.