COVID-19: Iraq records nearly 4,000 new infections, 51 fatalities

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq’s Ministry of Health and Environment on Tuesday announced 3,595 new coronavirus cases over the previous 24 hours.

According to a statement, health workers had completed 18,691 tests in the past day, making for a total of nearly 3 million tests carried out since the first case of the highly-contagious disease in Iraq was confirmed in late February.

So far, over 482,000 patients in Iraq have contracted the coronavirus, 11,068 of whom have died.

Officials also announced that decisions regarding how the new school year will be managed have yet to be made because various factors are still being studied by the health and education ministries. So far, the 2020-2021 academic year has not resumed in Iraq, more than two weeks after the originally scheduled start date.

Health Minister Hassan Mohammad al-Tamimi said in a statement on Monday that his ministry “has requested some health instructions that are required to be implemented by the Ministry of Education. If these instructions are implemented, the topic of starting the new school year will be discussed by the High Committee of National Health and Safety."

Officials in the autonomous Kurdistan Region said on Sunday that the start of both public and private schools have been suspended for a month due to a current spike in infections among teaching staff and students.

Read More: COVID-19: Kurdistan Region moves to online learning as daily infections spike

Today's infection and fatality figures reported by the Iraqi federal government in Baghdad do not include the most recent developments in the Kurdistan Region, which has its own health ministry and typically announces results later in the day. As such, Kurdistan's figures are usually added to the following day's national tally.

Read More: COVID-19: Kurdistan Region total infections near 80,000 cases

The coronavirus has infected more than 38 million people worldwide and killed over one million, according to Johns Hopkins University’s database. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities or underreporting. 

Editing by John J. Catherine