COVID-19: Iraq reports new record daily cases, as total tops 250,000

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraqi health authorities on Friday announced a record-breaking 5,036 coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, raising the total number of reported infections to over 250,000.

The Ministry of Health and Environment said in a statement said that it had conducted 23,802 coronavirus tests over the previous 24 hours, making for a total of nearly 1.7 million tests carried out since the first case was confirmed in the country in February.

So far, Iraq has reported 252,075 confirmed infections, 7,359 of them fatal.

According to the ministry, the test positivity rate for Friday was just over 21 percent. The figure is derived by dividing the tests that came back as positive by the total number of tests carried out that day.

The test positivity rate is a measure that helps better understand how the infectious disease is spreading, with a lower percentage generally indicating that authorities are conducting enough testing to find the virus.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a test positivity rate of less than five percent for two weeks running is among critical indicators that the disease is under control in a region.

Today's figures from the federal ministry 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.

Today's figures are an alarming sign that Iraq's preventive measures have not been effective in controlling the pandemic. Previously, the World Health Organization (WHO) alarmed that Iraq must prevent further community outbreaks "at any cost."

On Tuesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus called on governments around the world to continue lockdown measures imposed to stop outbreaks, adding that lifting such rules without controlling the virus would have serious consequences. 

"We want to see children go back to school and people return to the workplace, but we want to see this done safely," he said, adding, "No country can pretend that the epidemic is over. The truth is that this virus spreads easily. Lifting restrictions without control is a recipe for disaster." 

He added that "explosive outbreaks" around the world have been linked to gatherings of people.

Recently, thousands of Shia Muslims from multiple provinces across Iraq gathered to commemorate the annual religious observance of Ashura in the city of Karbala. Many attending could be seen wearing masks that were handed out for free, but in precisely the kind of behavior that health officials around the world have consistently and emphatically warned against, large numbers of the faithful crowded in very close proximity for hours on end.

Read More: PHOTOS: Iraq's Shia mark Ashura amid COVID-19

The coronavirus has infected over 26 million people worldwide and killed more than 864,000, 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 Khrush Najari