Politics

COVID-19: Iraq records all-time high daily infections of over 3,400

On Friday, Iraq's Ministry of Health and Environment announced an all-time record high of over 3,400 new infections of the coronavirus that were detected in the country over the previous 24 hours.

Halgurd Sherwani 2020/08/07 15:25

middle east Iraq Pandemic All-time high COVID-19 coronavirus

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Friday, Iraq's Ministry of Health and Environment announced an all-time record high of over 3,400 new infections of the coronavirus that were detected in the country over the previous 24 hours.

The new figures raise the total infections to 144,064. The ministry also reported that 75 new deaths had occurred over the same time period, raising the number of fatalities since the infection began to 5,236.

According to a ministry statement, of the 17,517 coronavirus tests that health workers conducted over the past day, 3,461 came back positive.

Iraq’s spiking COVID-19 figures

Iraq has recently been reporting increasingly high numbers of new coronavirus cases. On July 31, it recorded its highest number of new daily infections until that date: over 3, 300 cases.

Now, just a week later, the number of daily infections has increased by 100. That is the nature of the highly infectious disease. Unless the appropriate public health measures are adopted—and followed by the population—the numbers keep climbing.

On Tuesday, Iraq achieved the dubious distinction of becoming the Arab-majority country with the highest number of deaths from the disease, as fatalities in the country climbed to over 5,000.

Egypt is the Arab country with second highest number of fatalities: 4951 have been recorded so far, according to government-data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

According to the Johns Hopkins database, the coronavirus has infected more than 19.1 million people worldwide and killed over 715,000. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities or underreporting.

A major factor responsible for the increase in Iraqi cases was the re-opening in mid-May of Iraq’s borders with Iran, the original epicenter of the disease in the Middle East.

Iraqi authorities do not appear to have a credible means of controlling the virus, and the numbers of infections and deaths will likely keep on rising.

Editing by Laurie Mylroie