COVID-19: Kurdistan again breaks daily record with 677 new cases
.jpg)
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region on Tuesday again broke its record of new daily coronavirus cases when health officials announced 677 infections over the previous 24 hours, as well as 18 deaths.
With 343 of the new cases, Erbil topped the other three provinces that make up the autonomous region of Iraq. Sulaimani had 124, Duhok had 194, and 16 were recorded in Halabja.
To date, just under 30,000 people have contracted the highly-contagious disease in the Kurdistan Region, 903 of whom have died.
On Sunday, the World Health Organization (WHO) in Iraq, in cooperation with the Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Health, announced that it had launched a “major COVID-19 prevention and containment campaign.”
The campaign began in Sulaimani province, the initial epicenter of the coronavirus in the Kurdistan Region, due “mainly to its proximity and long borders with neighboring Iran,” a WHO statement explained.
Iran, for its part, was the original epicenter of the disease in the Middle East, because of its close ties with China, where it first emerged.
Read More: COVID-19 spikes again in Iran, with regional implications
The joint campaign by WHO and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to educate people about the coronavirus and how to protect themselves will engage “the local community through the mobilization of more than 250 local community volunteers to reach a population of over 800,000 people in 10 targets areas including IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) and refugee camps in Arbat and Kalar districts,” a WHO statement explained.
On Friday, the Ministry of Interior of the Kurdistan Region issued new decisions to ease restrictions imposed to limit the spread of the coronavirus, while also affirming the enforcement of fines for violators of health guidelines such as wearing masks in public.
The Kurdistan Region’s capital city of Erbil, for its part, announced that while it was easing lockdown, it was also taking specific necessary measures mandatory and legally enforceable.
A statement on the new regulations, announced by Erbil Governorate, as it eased the restrictions, explained that face masks are mandatory. Anyone not wearing a face mask in public will be charged 20,000 IQD ($16).
Editing by John J. Catherine