COVID-19: KRG reports 259 new cases, six deaths
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region health ministry announced on Wednesday that it had recorded 259 coronavirus infections and six deaths due to complications related to the highly-contagious disease during the past 24 hours.
A ministry statement said health workers had conducted over 2,300 coronavirus tests over the same period, raising the total since the disease first entered the Kurdistan Region to over 136,000. Of the total new confirmed cases, 161 were in Sulaimani province, 80 in Erbil, and 18 in Halabja.
The statement noted that, since authorities first began imposing mandatory two-week quarantines on travelers returning to the Kurdistan Region and suspected cases, 16,704 people have been put under the restriction, with 15,378 of them now discharged.
Since the start, there have been just over 6,400 coronavirus infections, including nearly 2,100 recoveries, about 4,100 active cases, and 213 deaths due to the disease, according to official data.
When the number of cases witnessed a notable uptick and crossed into the lower hundreds of daily infections in late May, the gap between the number of active cases and recovered patients has only grown larger.
Fatalities due to the disease have also grown substantially, with regional health officials warning it is likely they will continue to climb.
Describing the situation in grim terms, health ministry spokesman Mohammed Qadir warned on Tuesday that “the number of coronavirus infections is increasing drastically,” adding that “the threat of the virus lies with infected individuals who are not showing any symptoms.”
Read More: Kurdistan health ministry says new COVID-19 cases 'increasing drastically'
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.
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.
Read More: COVID-19 spikes again in Iran, with regional implications
The coronavirus has infected more than 10.8 million people worldwide and killed over 519,000 according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities and underreporting.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany