COVID-19: Kurdistan Region registers 500 new cases in 24 hours

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s health authorities on Tuesday announced another 500 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to over 94,000 cases since the advent of the pandemic in the region.

In their daily coronavirus update, officials from the regional health ministry announced 500 new infections over the previous 24 hours out of more than 5,020 tests completed in that period.

The Kurdistan Region has, thus, seen 94,421 cases of COVID-19.

Health authorities also announced 21 new deaths in the same period, bringing the number of fatalities to 3,036.

Officials have attributed a recent spike in the number of patients—at times over 1,000 new daily cases—primarily to the public’s failure to follow mandated health measures to stem the spread of the disease.

Health officials announced this week that over 31,000 COVID-19 patients are currently being treated in hospitals and clinics throughout the Kurdistan Region.

Read More: COVID-19: Kurdistan Region has over 31,000 patients under treatment

The health ministry has said that over 57,000 people have recovered from the coronavirus, but it is important to note that a “recovery” only indicates that a patient is no longer being actively treated by health professionals—not that they have fully recovered from the disease.

The coronavirus has infected over 57 million people worldwide and killed almost 1.4 million, 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