COVID-19: Kurdistan Region records increase with 730 cases in 24 hours

The Kurdistan Region’s Health Ministry on Monday announced an increase in COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours with 730 new cases, along with 17 deaths.

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s Health Ministry on Monday announced an increase in COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours with 730 new cases, along with 17 deaths.

In its daily statement on COVID-19 figures, the regional health ministry said it had completed 5,023 tests across the autonomous region in the past day, 730 of which were positive.

The official statement also noted that there had been 17 deaths during the same period: seven in Sulaimani province, six in Duhok province, four in Erbil.

There have now been over 41,000 confirmed infections in the Kurdistan Region, 1,536 of them fatal.

As Autumn approaches the Kurdistan Region, health officials repeatedly warn residents to adhere strictly to precautionary measures as infections from both coronavirus and seasonal influenzas could co-occur, overburdening the health care system. 

The total death count in the Kurdistan Region reached 1,500 fatalities since the pandemic hit the region in early March, as the regional health ministry on Sunday registered 24 fatalities due to the coronavirus.

Read More: Kurdistan Region COVID-19 fatalities surpass 1,500

Health officials say that 26,921 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.

The coronavirus has infected more than 31 million people worldwide and killed over 946,000, according to Johns Hopkins University’s database. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities or underreporting.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany