COVID-19: Kurdistan Region announces 838 new infections

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The autonomous Kurdistan Region’s Health Ministry on Friday recorded nearly 840 new coronavirus cases and 12 deaths over the previous 24 hours.

According to figures released by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the total number of infections so far has now reached 54,387. Adding the new death figures, the region has now lost 1,949 as a result of complications caused by the coronavirus.

Health officials say that over 34,000 have recovered from the highly-contagious disease, but it is important to note that the classification of “recovery” indicates that a patient is 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 such as significant lung damage could be permanent.

On Wednesday, Sulaimani Governor Haval Abubakir warned that, if health precautions are not strictly adhered to, the provinces of Erbil, Duhok, and Halabja could match the number of fatalities in areas under his jurisdiction.

“I assure other provinces that, in the upcoming two weeks, your condition will be like Sulaimani's,” Abubakir told reporters during a press conference.

As of Friday, the province has recorded 17,550 cases since the beginning of the pandemic along with nearly 1,000 fatalities.

The governor’s remarks come one day after the Sulaimani Health Directorate announced 15 fatalities in the past day across the province, which a statement explained, “is in a dangerous situation that has never been seen before.”

After the first case was confirmed there in early March, the province became the epicenter of the outbreak in the Kurdistan Region, largely because of the borders it shares with Iran, from where most cases in the Middle East appear to have spread.  

On Thursday, a lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad who sits on the Health and Environment Committee suggested that a comprehensive curfew could soon be reimposed due to sustained high infection rates across the nation. 

Read More: COVID-19: Iraqi official warns that full curfew could be reimposed as spike in cases continues

Editing by John J. Catherine