COVID-19: Kurdistan Region reports almost 70,000 recoveries so far

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s ministry of health announced 217 new recoveries from the COVID-19 infection in the last 24 hours, with total recoveries nearing 70,000 cases since the start of the pandemic.

In its daily statement on COVID-19 figures, the regional health ministry said it had completed 2,288 tests across the autonomous region in the past day, 123 of which returned positive.

The official statement also noted that there had been three deaths during the same period, each of the Kurdistan Region’s main provinces of Duhok, Erbil, and Sulaimani recorded a death.

There have now been over 103,222 confirmed infections in the Kurdistan Region, 3,383 of them fatal, according to ministry data.

Adding the 217 new recoveries, the Kurdistan Region has so far seen 69,967 recovered patients previously infected with the virus.

It is important to note that a patient classified as a “recovery” means they are no longer actively treated by health professionals, not that they have fully recovered.

Increasingly, medical experts recognize that some COVID-19 symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, often continue long after an individual’s formal recovery and that various other symptoms, including significant lung damage, could be permanent.

Contrary to the previous months, the Kurdistan Region recorded a low number of daily infections while the testing rates remain above 2,000 per day. As of Wednesday, two COVID-19 treatment centers have been shut down after all of their patients had been discharged.

In-class sessions at schools and academic institutions have remained closed throughout the Kurdistan Region since Nov. 1 due to alarming surges of infections.

The ministry of education is awaiting public health officials’ new recommendations in order to decide on the new school year and mechanisms of reopening in-class sessions, the minister said on Tuesday in a press conference.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany