COVID-19: Iraq continues to record new uptick of infections; total deaths reach over 5,000

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Tuesday, Iraq's Ministry of Health and Environment recorded a new uptick in daily COVID-19 infections of over 2,800 positive cases in the past 24 hours, as Iraq’s total coronavirus-related deaths reached over 5,000.

Per a ministry statement, health workers had conducted 16,813 coronavirus tests during the same period, raising the total number of such tests to 1,059,619 since the start of the pandemic.

The total number of cases rose by 2,836 to reach 134,722, according to the ministry. Out of the total confirmed infections, 96,103 patients have recovered from the disease.

The ministry also reported 83 new deaths, bringing the total fatalities figures to 5,017, making Iraq the first Arab country, after Egypt, to have the highest deaths rate.

Taking the size of the population of each country into account, those figures become stark. The population of Iraq is nearly 40 million, while the population of Egypt is nearly 100 million—over twice as much.

Thus, while Iraq has slightly more coronavirus deaths than Egypt, which has the second-largest number of such deaths among Arab countries, Iraq has over twice as many per capita.

With cases of COVID-19 continuing to rise in Iraq, the country’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced on Sunday that Turkish authorities had suspended all commercial flights to and from Iraq – including the Kurdistan Region – until Sept. 1, at the request of the Turkish Health Ministry.

The Turkish announcement follows the July 23 reopening of Iraqi airports to commercial flights, after a five-month-long ban on air travel, which had been imposed to stem the spread of the virus.

Read More: PHOTOS: Iraqi airports reopen amid continued spike in infections

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany