COVID-19: Kurdistan Region records over 2,000 new cases, 19 deaths in past 24 hours

Halgurd Sherwani 2021/08/10 14:26

A medic checks an elderly man's temperature as he arrives at a COVID-19 vaccine center in Erbil, August 7, 2021. (Photo: Safin Hamed/AFP)

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The health authorities of the Kurdistan Region announced over 2,000 new recorded cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, raising the total number of infections to over 250,000.

In their daily coronavirus update, officials from the regional health ministry announced 2,069 new confirmed infections from more than 12,100 tests carried out in the previous day.

The Kurdistan Region has seen an surge in the number of new daily infections, driven in part by the rapid spread of the Delta variant.

On Monday, Health Minister Saman Barznji warned that the the region had officially entered a "red phase" in the pandemic "and is in a dangerous situation."

To date, the Kurdistan Region has seen 258,070 cases of COVID-19.

Health authorities also announced 19 deaths over the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 4,970.

Officials have attributed the recent spike in the number of patients primarily to the public’s failure to follow mandated health measures to stem the spread of the disease.