COVID-19: Kurdistan health ministry says new cases 'increasing drastically'
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Health announced on Tuesday that it had recorded 7 deaths and 240 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours.
The ministry reported that out of 1,582 of the new tests it had conducted, 58 returned positive in Erbil province, 181 in Sulaimani, one in Dohuk, and none in Halabja.
“The number of coronavirus infections is increasing drastically,” regional Ministry of Health Spokesperson Mohammed Qadir warned that day during an interview with Kurdistan 24.
“The threat of the virus lies with infected individuals who are not showing any symptoms,” he stated. “There are many people who are infected, but are asymptomatic and are therefore infecting others.”
“If this continues, we are heading toward a disastrous situation,” Qadir added, explaining that the aim of the curfew, which took effect again on Tuesday in Erbil, is to decrease the rate of interaction between infected people with others.
Qadir stressed that the fight against the coronavirus is not limited to the actions of the Ministry of Health. Citizens, too, must do their part.
“It is everyone’s fight and responsibility to keep themselves and their surroundings safe,” he said, adding, “If the number of new infections keeps rising at the current rate, the ministry will be able to do little to handle it.”
“So it is also the decision of the citizen, as to where the situation will be heading,” he stated.
The Spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Health also elaborated on the visit of an Iraqi medical team to Russia to acquire medicine used there to trerat the virus. “The experiments on the drug show promising results,” he said, “as it was used to fight the flu before, although we will wait until it is manufactured by local medical companies with high quality.”
According to the region’s health ministry, the number of infections has reached 5,904, with 1,322 of them in Erbil province, 4,229 in Sulaimani, 139 in Duhok, and 56 in Halabja. There are 3,939 active cases being treated in the autonomous region's hospitals. So far, there have been 200 deaths, 26 in Erbil, 170 in Sulaimani, and four in Halabja.
According to health officials, the current wave of the disease was at least partially caused by last month's opening of the borders with Iran in both the Kurdistan Region and Iraq.
Read More: COVID-19 spikes again in Iran, with regional implications
The original epicenter of the disease in the Middle East, Iran never managed to gain effective control over the virus and the situation there is growing steadily more serious.
The coronavirus has infected more than 10.3 million people worldwide and killed over 507,000 according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities and underreporting.
Editing by John J, Catherine