Coronavirus cases declining in Kurdistan Region; officials decry low vaccination rate

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Regional's Ministry of Health on Tuesday announced 440 new coronavirus infections and five deaths of patients with the highly contagious disease over the previous 24 hours.

Health officials stated in their daily report that Erbil topped the death toll with four of the fatalities while the remaining was in Sulaimani.

This brings the total deaths across the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq to 4,331 since the first case was confirmed there in March 2021. The total number of infections to date is now 174,311.

Local officials say they have monitored a noticeable decline in the rate of coronavirus infections in recent days and weeks, prompting them to lift health restrictions in an effort to restore something resembling the normalcy that was standard before the pandemic utterly transformed everyday life across the region and across the world.

Health authorities continue to complain about the slow pace of the program to vaccinate the entire population.

Of the total population of the Kurdistan Region - roughly six million people - about 120,000 of them have received the free vaccine.

Read More: COVID-19 infection numbers 'stable' in Kurdistan Region while Baghdad continues night curfew

The number of vaccinated people across Iraq has reached more than 650,000 out of its total population of 40 million, according to the latest report of the Federal Ministry of Health.

Editing by John J. Catherine