COVID-19: Kurdistan records 105 new cases; total infections top 1,000
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – As the weekend began, the Kurdistan Region Ministry of Health recorded 105 new COVID-19 cases and two related fatalities.
The statement from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Health Ministry explained that out of 1,738 coronavirus tests conducted across the region in the previous 24 hours, 747 of which were carried out in Erbil province, 570 in Sulaimani, 400 in Duhok, 17 in the Garmiyan administration and four in Halabja.
Out of the 105 new confirmed cases in the Kurdistan Region, Sulaimani province recorded the highest with 84 cases, with the second-highest in Erbil with 12. After that was Garmiyan with 12 cases, Duhok with six, and Halabja province with only three.
Both deaths were in Sulaimani. The province's governor, Haval Abubakir, said previously on Wednesday that if the upward trend continued because the public was not following health regulations, then medical centers would soon be filled and “citizens have to turn their houses into hospitals.”
“We only have 250 beds and 60 ventilators in hospitals,” Governer Abubakir told Kurdistan 24.
Since health officials recorded the first cases of coronavirus in the region, the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) health ministry has conducted 84,664 COVID-19 tests in total. Since the autonomous region typically announces its results later in the day than the federal health ministry in Baghdad, Kurdistan's numbers are usually added to the following day's national tally.
On Thursday, the Iraqi Ministry of Health announced that it had recorded 15 new deaths and 672 new infections over the previous 24 hours.
Read More: COVID-19: In Iraq, 15 deaths and 672 new cases in 24 hours
Erbil General Health Director Dlovan Mohammad told Kurdistan 24 that, in his province, “Four patients are in unstable condition while one is in a very critical situation and has been admitted to an intensive care unit.”
During a press conference on Tuesday, KRG Interior Minister Rebar Ahmed said, “If we do not comply with health regulations, we will reach a dangerous phase and new infections, including deaths, will be very high,” adding that the curfew will remain in place and the inter-provincial travel ban will continue.
He added that local provincial governments will be given the authority to implement certain relaxations of current health regulations amid a new temporary region-wide curfew following a recent sustained spike in new coronavirus cases.
The highly-contagious disease has infected over 6.6 million people worldwide and killed more than 391,000, according to government-reported data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities or underreporting.
Editing by John J. Catherine