Kurdistan reports nearly 300 new COVID-19 cases, 12 deaths
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s health ministry on Thursday reported close to 300 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours as well as twelve fatalities due to complications related to the pandemic.
Health workers had conducted roughly 2,500 new tests for the virus during the same period, according to a ministry statement, which detailed that 298 of them had come back positive for the highly-contagious disease: 106 in Erbil province, 107 in Sulaimani, six in Halabja, and three in Duhok.
Twelve more patients passed away, raising the total number of coronavirus deaths across the Kurdistan Region to 294, according to official data. Only 64 more persons confirmed to have contracted the virus were reported as having recovered within the same 24-hour period.
Since the first confirmed infections in the Kurdistan Region in February, authorities have conducted close to 155,000 coronavirus tests, confirming 8,726 cases, including about 3,072 recoveries and 5,360 still-active cases. Most infections in the autonomous region are concentrated in Sulaimani province, numbering over 6,100.
Since late May, after opening its border with Iran, the original epicenter of the disease in the Middle East, Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have been recording increasingly higher numbers of infections and deaths, especially over the past month.
Related Article: WHO: 'Breach' of health regulations, trade with Iran behind new COVID-19 spike in Iraq, Kurdistan
The coronavirus has infected more than 12.1 million people worldwide and killed just under 551,000 according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities and underreporting.
Editing by John J. Catherine