Kurdistan Region records over 500 new COVID-19 cases as UK variant spreads

A healthcare worker in the Kurdistan Region's capital Erbil prepares to give an injection to a COVID-19 patient, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo: AFP/Safen Hamed)
A healthcare worker in the Kurdistan Region's capital Erbil prepares to give an injection to a COVID-19 patient, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo: AFP/Safen Hamed)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Health authorities in the Kurdistan Region recorded more than 500 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday as the Region continues to face a rapidly spreading UK variant of coronavirus.

A health ministry statement said health workers had conducted 7,720 tests over the past 24 hours, raising the total number of COVID-19 tests to over 130,000 since the outbreak began in the Kurdistan Region in early March 2020.

The Region recorded new 512 infections. According to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) figures, the total number of coronavirus infections have reached 114,510.

The ministry also recorded two more deaths in the past 24 hours, raising the death toll from the pandemic to 3,579 fatalities.

Health officials say that over 106,000 people have recovered from the highly contagious disease, a category that indicates a patient is no longer being actively treated by health professionals, not that they have fully recovered from the infection.

Increasingly, medical experts recognize that COVID-19 symptoms, some of them serious, can continue long after a person formally recovers, and that various symptoms such as significant lung damage could be permanent.

‘UK variant spreading quickly’

The health ministry on Wednesday warned that the UK variant of coronavirus is spreading quickly across the Region, causing a burden on the hospitals and other health facilities. 

“Hospital beds are filled [quickly], indicating a higher number of infections,” the ministry said. 

In late February, the Region’s health authorities confirmed five cases of the UK coronavirus variant. One day later, 14 new cases of the same version were detected, including seven recorded in tourists. 

Read More: What you should know about the UK COVID-19 variant in the Kurdistan Region

The UK variant is a mutation of the novel coronavirus that was first detected in the county of Kent in southeast England in September 2020.

Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly