Iraq, Kurdistan top record daily COVID-19 infections

An Iraqi health ministry statement said health workers had conducted about 21,000 COVID-19 tests over 24 hours.

Khrush Najari 2020/08/19 04:47

middle east Kurdistan Iraq Baghdad COVID19

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Health authorities in the Kurdistan Region and Iraq on Monday reported new record-breaking numbers of daily coronavirus infections. There were close to 4,600 cases in 24 hours across the country, according to official data, including over 600 in the autonomous region.

The numbers were a new record, as the number of cases reported continues to increase daily.

An Iraqi health ministry statement said health workers had conducted about 21,000 tests for the virus over the same period. The country has carried out about 1.33 million such examinations since the outbreak of the disease in China in late 2019.

The majority of the new cases were in the densely populated Baghdad province. The total number of cases has now risen to about 185,000 per ministry figures. Approximately 47,000 patients still have the virus, over 6,000 have passed away, and 132,000 have recovered.

It should be noted that a “recovery” does not necessarily mean that the former infected persons have fully healed. Studies suggest that even after the virus has left one’s body, a recovered person can still suffer lingering symptoms that still affect their health, even in individuals that had a “mild” version of the disease.

As the country has relaxed lockdown measures and ramped up testing, both transmission and detection of the virus has increased. Authorities have often stated that the lack of adherence to health guidelines has been a primary driver of infections.

According to the Kurdistan Region’s health ministry, health workers had conducted about 3,600 coronavirus tests. Most of the cases in the region were, as has been the case in recent weeks, in Erbil province, where the situation has been significantly worse.

There was also a new all-time high number of coronavirus fatalities, with 26 deaths.

Total tests across the region currently stand at around 256,000, of which about 22,000 have returned positive. Of all the cases, nearly 12,800 have recovered, about 8,700 remain ill, and just over 800 have passed away.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany