Politics

COVID-19: Iraq records 82 deaths and 4,597 infections in 24 hours

Iraq's Ministry of Health and Environment announced 4,597 new coronavirus infections and 82 deaths in its daily pandemic health briefing on Thursday.

Mustafa Shilani 2020/09/10 15:19

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ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq's Ministry of Health and Environment announced 4,597 new coronavirus infections and 82 deaths in its daily pandemic health briefing on Thursday.

The ministry pointed out that it had conducted 23,479 tests in the past 24 hours, making a total of 1,840,913 tests carried out since the first case in Iraq was confirmed in February.

According to the health statement, the total number of patients across the nation who have contracted the highly-contagious disease has reached 278,418 to date, 7,814 of whom have died.

Iraq has begun to take steps towards returning life to some semblance of normality by removing some of the imposed health restrictions, although health officials the world over routinely warn that such moves must be made with extreme caution if further mass outbreaks are to be avoided and despite the nation's current high daily infections rates which tend to range somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000.

"The coronavirus is an advanced flu and it is necessary to live with such viruses to restore life to normal while abiding by health instructions," said Abbas Elewi, a member of the anti-coronavirus Parliamentary Crisis Cell.

"Reopening government departments and institutions at only 50 percent of normal working hours represents a plan of coexistence with the epidemic.

Authorities in Iraq fear a significant collapse of the national health system, given the extremely limited functional health infrastructure due to decades of violent conflict, instability, and institutional corruption.

Today's figures 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.

The coronavirus has infected almost 28 million people worldwide and killed over 900,000 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