Iraq exceeds 200,000 coronavirus cases
The Iraqi Ministry of Health and Environment on Saturday announced it had recorded nearly 4,000 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections since the start of the pandemic to 200,000.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi Ministry of Health and Environment on Saturday announced it had recorded nearly 4,000 new coronavirus cases over the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections since the start of the pandemic to 200,000.
The ministry said in its daily statement that health workers had carried out over 20,000 tests, of which 3,965 came back positive, also raising the total number of such tests to over 1.4 million since the virus first appeared in China in late 2019.
Official figures indicate that the total number of infections in Iraq has reached 201,050, including 143,393 recoveries, 6,353 deaths. And, out of the total, over 51,000 cases remain active, according to the ministry.
In recent months, Iraqi health authorities have been reporting increasingly higher numbers of coronavirus infections, now nearly double the official tally of its eastern neighbor, Iran, from where the virus entered Iraqi territory in February.
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On Saturday, the governmental Iraqi Religious Council issued a fatwa, an Islamic decree, calling for the "gradual" reopening of mosques, without allowing Friday prayers, where large numbers of worshippers could gather and facilitate the transfer of the virus.
The move comes about four months after such sites were closed as part of measures to curb the spread of the virus.
On Friday, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom, said that they hope that the global coronavirus pandemic will end in less than two years, noting that the Spanish flu had taken that long to dissipate.
Adhanom added, "in our situation now, with more technology, and of course, with more communication between people, the virus has a greater opportunity to spread because it can transmit quickly, however at the same time we have the technology and the knowledge to stop it."
In addition, weather conditions may be a factor in transmission efficiency. According to a new study published in the Physics of Fluids journal, humidity facilitates the spread of the virus.
Read More: Iraq reports over 4,200 COVID-19 cases, more than 70 fatalities
Editing by Khrush Najari