COVID-19: Kurdistan Region records over 750 new cases, 26 deaths

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s Health Ministry announced a new increase of over 750 new COVID-19 cases and 26 deaths in the past 24 hours, raising the total infections to over 38,000 cases.

In its daily statement on COVID-19, the regional health ministry stated that health workers had completed 5,920 tests across the autonomous region in the past day, 754 of which were positive.

The official statement also explained that there had been 26 deaths during the same period: 13 in Duhok province, nine in Sulaimani, four in Erbil, and two in Halabja.

There have now been 38,661 confirmed infections in the Kurdistan Region, 1,417 of them fatal.

Health officials say that 24,522 coronavirus patients have recovered, but it is important to note that a patient classified as a “recovery” means they are no longer being actively treated by health professionals, not that they have fully recovered. Increasingly, medical experts recognize that COVID-19 symptoms, some of them serious, often continue long after an individual’s formal recovery and that various other symptoms could be permanent.

The Director General of the Erbil Health Department, Dr. Delovan Mohammad, held a press conference on Sunday in which he announced that the provincial government would launch a five-day campaign to educate the public about the highly contagious disease and measures which it needs to take to protect individuals and families from the virus.

Read More: Erbil launches COVID-19 awareness campaign as KRG reports over 570 new cases

The campaign involves distributing informational brochures and face masks among residents within Erbil as well as to those traveling between provinces.

The World Health Organization (WHO), alongside local non-governmental organizations, will take part in the campaign, Mohammad said, adding that a total of 35 teams were being mobilized for the educational effort.

In late August, the WHO initiated a “major COVID-19 prevention and containment campaign,” which 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,” where the first cases in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region spread from.

The Kurdistan Region has recently witnessed new surges in coronavirus cases across its provinces, particularly in Duhok and Erbil, provinces that had both enjoyed relatively fewer infections over the past months.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany