Health

Kurdistan Region tops COVID-19 cases, deaths across Iraq

Over the past 24 hours, most of the cases were recorded in the Kurdistan Region's Sulaimani province, where health authorities reported 463 COVID-19 infections and ten deaths.

Kurdistan 24 2021/10/22 19:44

Health workers at an Iraqi coronavirus clinic. (Photo: Archive)

Iraq COVID-19 Iraq Kurdistan

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region on Friday topped the number of COVID-19 cases and fatalities recorded in a single day across all of Iraq, according to federal health ministry data.

In its daily report, the Iraqi Ministry of Health said that it had recorded in total 1,846 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours. There were also 26 deaths related to the disease during the same period.

Most of the cases and fatalities were recorded in the Kurdistan Region provinces of Sulaimani, Erbil, and Duhok, the ministry's data indicated.

Topping all, Sulaimani province's health authorities had recorded 463 new COVID-19 infections, as well as ten deaths in the past 24 hours, per the federal health ministry.

Duhok province came second, with health officials reporting 318 cases of the highly contagious disease, along with two fatalities. In Erbil province, there were 295 new infections and nine deaths.

On Thursday, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) earmarked an emergency budget of 400 million Iraqi dinars (approximately $275,000) to provide COVID-19 relief for the Raparin area of Sulaimani province, which has recently seen a sharp rise in the number of infections.

The KRG’s health minister, Saman Barzinji, recently visited the areas under the Raparin administration to assess the situation. Most of the hospitalized patients in the administration are unvaccinated, he told Kurdistan 24.

There have been over 352,000 documented cases of COVID-19 in the Kurdistan Region.

The KRG is also deploying mobile vaccination teams to places with high interactions to increase the vaccination rate among citizens as COVID-19 infections increase across the autonomous region, the KRG’s health minister announced on Monday.