COVID-19: Kurdistan Region registers highest death toll in single day

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region registered its highest COVID-19 death toll in a single day with 29 fatalities, raising the total death count to 1,446 since the virus hit the region in early March.

In its daily statement on COVID-19, the regional health ministry said health workers had completed 6,321 tests across the autonomous region in the past day, 680 of which were positive.

The official statement also explained that there had been 29 deaths during the same period: 12 in Duhok province, 11 in Sulaimani province, and six in Erbil.

There have now been 38,661 confirmed infections in the Kurdistan Region, 1,417 of them fatal.

Health officials say that 24,792 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.

Coronavirus in Kurdistan: Avoidable Tragedies

In its statement, WHO related conversations with individuals who had caught the virus. They are not people who were elderly or ill, and they did not die from the disease. Nonetheless, they suffered grievously.

“In Mawlawi street, Sulaimani downtown, a family of six members just recovered after a two-week hospitalization,” the WHO statement explained.

“The hard time we’ve been through wouldn’t have happened if we had committed to the lockdown and social distancing,” Sabah Mousa said.

“The disease is a fact—not fake like others believe,” Mousa told WHO. “It is dangerous and tough,” he warned.

“More painful stories are still out there,” WHO added, “and could have been prevented with simple prevention measures like mask-wearing and social distancing.”

“The population [has begun] to realize the seriousness of the infection,” Dr. Sami Abdul Rahman told WHO.

“It is a reality,” he continued “that can be avoided by tending to hygiene practices, social distancing, and compulsory wearing of masks—which is what WHO is promoting,” along with the KRG, through their public awareness campaign.

The Kurdistan Region has recently witnessed new surges in coronavirus cases across its provinces, particularly in Duhok and Erbil, provinces that had both enjoyed relatively fewer infections over the past months.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany