COVID-19: Iraq records highest daily infections of over 4,000

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Friday, the Iraqi Ministry of Health and Environment announced that there were over 4,000 new cases of the disease, marking the highest number of daily infections since the virus first appeared in the country.

According to the ministry’s figures, out of 20,446 COVID-19 tests conducted in the past 24 hours, 4,013 cases came back positive. This marked an increase in the record that had been marked just one day before—on Thursday—with over 3,800 cases.

Exponential Spread of Dangerous Disease

The nature of the highly contagious coronavirus is that once public health authorities lose control of the situation, the disease spreads at an exponential rate. That now seems to be happening in Iraq.

This problem is particularly acute with this disease, because even those who do not appear to suffer symptoms can spread it. Thus people can, unknowingly, give it to others.

Indeed, a recent article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, “Prevalence of Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection,” explained that 40% to 45% of the transmission of the disease came from individuals without symptoms.

Moreover, doctors are regularly learning more about the disease, and the same article reports an important new finding: even those who are asymptomatic can suffer permanent lung damage from COVID-19.

As one author of the article remarked, “Although they are silent without symptoms, internally, they are taking hits in there, inside their body, so they don't even know it.”

Iraq now has 168, 290 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, since it first appeared in the country in February. Iraq long seemed to have it under control, however. The current, growing health crisis stems from events in May, when Iraq agreed to re-open border crossings with Iran, the original epicenter of the virus in the Middle East.

Read More: COVID-19 spikes again in Iran, with regional implications

Iraq’s federal health ministry also announced on Friday that there had been 68 deaths from COVID-19, raising the total to 5,709.

Officials Warn Iraqis About Consequences of Failure to Comply with Public Health Regulations

The daily, mounting records in infections in Iraq are due in large measure to public complacency and carelessness, and the resulting failure of significant numbers of people to follow the health regulations that officials have repeatedly promulgated.

On Thursday, an Iraqi parliamentary committee, tasked with coordinating the country’s response to the pandemic, warned of a sustained, ongoing spike in the number of infections.

"The coming days will witness a significant increase in the number of daily coronavirus infections, due to a failure to implement measures and decisions taken to curb the pandemic,” a committee member, Ryaz al-Masoudi, warned in a written statement.

Masoudi complained that "decisions taken are only on paper and are not implemented on the ground.” As an example, he noted that although there was a curfew in effect, it was not actually carried out on the streets.

“The continuing high daily infection rate makes the Ministry of Health unable to cope with the increase,” he warned, “and the government is required to put urgent plans in place to confront the next big wave of the virus."

On Friday, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, Hazem Al-Jumaili, cautioned that such numbers should act as an "alarm bell" among health professionals and that the public must take the pandemic more seriously than it has so far.

“The citizens' commitment to preventive measures is the most important factor in reducing the number of infections," he said, arguing that the ongoing spike in cases was "the result of the citizens’ failure to comply with health guidelines.”

Editing by Laurie Mylroie