COVID19: Kurdistan Region cases near 40,0000

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s confirmed COVID19 cases near 40,000 cases as health ministry announced over 600 new cases in the past 24 hours.

In its daily statement on COVID-19 figures, the regional health ministry said health workers had completed 4,987 tests across the autonomous region in the past day, 605 of which were positive.

Adding the new figures, Kurdistan Region’s total infections cases would near 40,000 cases since the coronavirus pandemic hit the region in the early March.

The official statement also explained that there had been 26 deaths during the same period: 10 in Sulaimani province, eight in Erbil province, seven in Sulaimani, and one in Halabja.

There have now been 39,946 confirmed infections in the Kurdistan Region, 1,417 of them fatal.

Health officials say that 25,263 coronavirus patients have recovered, but it is important to note that a patient classified as a “recovery” means they are no longer being actively treated by health professionals, not that they have fully recovered. Increasingly, medical experts recognize that COVID-19 symptoms, some of them serious, often continue long after an individual’s formal recovery and that various other symptoms could be permanent.

Coronavirus in Kurdistan: Avoidable Tragedies

In its statement, WHO related conversations with individuals who had caught the virus. They are not people who were elderly or ill, and they did not die from the disease. Nonetheless, they suffered grievously.

“In Mawlawi street, Sulaimani downtown, a family of six members just recovered after a two-week hospitalization,” the WHO statement explained.

“The hard time we’ve been through wouldn’t have happened if we had committed to the lockdown and social distancing,” Sabah Mousa said.

“The disease is a fact—not fake like others believe,” Mousa told WHO. “It is dangerous and tough,” he warned.

“More painful stories are still out there,” WHO added, “and could have been prevented with simple prevention measures like mask-wearing and social distancing.”

“The population [has begun] to realize the seriousness of the infection,” Dr. Sami Abdul Rahman told WHO.

“It is a reality,” he continued “that can be avoided by tending to hygiene practices, social distancing, and compulsory wearing of masks—which is what WHO is promoting,” along with the KRG, through their public awareness campaign.

The Kurdistan Region has recently witnessed new surges in coronavirus cases across its provinces, particularly in Duhok and Erbil, provinces that had both enjoyed relatively fewer infections over the past months.