COVID-19: Kurdistan confirms over 900 new cases; plans to reopen Iran border crossings
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Health announced 912 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday in addition to 20 deaths associated with the highly-contagious disease over the previous 24 hours.
According to a statement, the ministry completed 5,340 tests in the past day, with 912 of them coming back positive; 235 in Erbil province, 215 in Sulaimani, 438 in Duhok, and 34 in Halabja.
To date, over 58,000 patients in the Kurdistan Region have contracted the disease so far, with more than 2,000 of the cases proving fatal.
In the past week, 54-year-old highly-regarded Kurdish women’s rights activist and poet Mahabad Qaradagh died while being treated for the coronavirus at a hospital in Erbil.
Read More: Prominent Kurdish women’s rights activist dies from coronavirus in Erbil
On Wednesday, the Kurdistan Region’s high-level committee to confront the coronavirus met to discuss the overall situation in the autonomous region, including health measures governing the new academic year and travel restrictions at border crossings.
Following the meeting, government spokesperson Jutyar Adil said during a press conference in Erbil that the first and second grades of primary school and the final grade of high school "will continue as planned," with in-person attendance, while the remaining grades will offer online classes only.
He also urged the Ministry of Interior to effectively implement the recent decision to impose penalties for not wearing face masks in public.
Adil continued, however, by announcing that committee members "also stressed the need to open" border crossings with Iran "for citizens to be able to travel after a mechanism for testing and inspection is set up."
Iran, the original epicenter of the coronavirus in the Middle East, is the nation from which most, if not all, early carriers of the disease in both the Kurdistan Region and Iraq entered.
On Monday, a new COVID-19 isolation ward was inaugurated, funded, and constructed by top international aid organizations, in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province for life-threatening cases of coronavirus patients.
Read More: Top international aid organizations build COVID-19 isolation ward in Duhok
The health center would only receive only patients who require intensive care, according to the US Consulate General in Erbil, and could be repurposed to treat respiratory illnesses once the pandemic is over.
With new medical equipment, “frontline workers can do their job safely & effectively,” the UNDP tweeted.
Editing by John J. Catherine