COVID-19: Iraqi official warns that full curfew could be reimposed as spike in cases continues

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi health ministry announced on Thursday that 3,522 new daily coronavirus cases had been confirmed as well as 79 deaths while some officials warned that restrictions could be ramped up to deal with sustained high infection rates.

The health ministry in a statement said that it had conducted 20,576 tests over the previous 24 hours, making for a total of nearly 2.5 million carried out since Iraq's first case in February.

A member of the national parliament's Health and Environment Committee also suggested that a comprehensive curfew might be reimposed throughout Iraq due to the coronavirus. 

"The advent of winter in the coming days is expected to witness a sharp increase in the number of daily coronavirus infections throughout Iraq," said lawmaker Rezan Diler said in a statement to local media outlets.

"The explosion in the number of casualties will, at that time, push the government to restore the comprehensive curfew and the return of restrictions to prevent things from getting out of control," added Diler, indicating that the number of infections will be exacerbated by "the lack of awareness by the majority of the Iraqi community of the importance of preventive measures."

According to the health ministry’s figures, the number of patients who have contracted the highly-contagious disease in Iraq so far has reached 394,566 in total, 9,683 of whom have died.

The infections began to gradually rise in Iraq about six months ago when authorities relaxed the restrictions imposed to prevent their spread. Now the Middle Eastern nation records between three and five thousand infections per day. Officials have voiced fears that the health system could collapse, given that the country has limited health infrastructure due to decades of war, instability, and institutional corruption.

Today's infection and fatality figures reported by the Iraqi federal government in Baghdad do not include the most recent developments in the autonomous Kurdistan Region, which has its own health ministry and typically announces results later in the day. As such, Kurdistan's figures are usually added to the following day's national tally.

Read More: COVID-19: Kurdistan Region records over 790 new cases in 24 hours

The coronavirus has infected more than 36 million people worldwide and killed over one million, according to Johns Hopkins University’s database. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities or underreporting. 

Editing by John J. Catherine