Kurdistan Region’s Health Ministry confirms two new COVID-19 cases in Erbil; total rises to 99

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Health on Wednesday confirmed two new cases of coronavirus in the Erbil governorate.

A health ministry statement said the newly infected are two 35-year-old men from Erbil city. Also on Tuesday, the health ministry confirmed six new cases of coronavirus in Sulaimani governorate, which brings the total to 99 confirmed cases in the Kurdistan Region, including two deaths.

The statement noted that the infected people from Sulaimani came from two families and interacted with previously infected individuals. The patients consist of three women, two children, and one man from Darbandikhan.

Furthermore, on late Tuesday evening, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Spokesperson Jutyar Adil announced that a special budget would be allocated for the Darbandikhan town administration and its health directorate to contain the coronavirus.

On Monday, the mayor of Darbandikhan in the Kurdistan Region’s Sulaimani requested additional aid to effectively implement a quarantine across the town following the diagnoses of eight individuals with the coronavirus.

The KRG has made successive public announcements and carried out multiple awareness campaigns to promote habits that would reduce the chance of being infected with the coronavirus, officially referred to as COVID-19 and classified as a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Over 423,000 people are confirmed to have contracted the virus worldwide, doubling the numbers reported last week, according to data compiled by WHO. More than 18,500 have died, as per official numbers reported by governments around the world, though the rate could be dramatically higher in some instances due to underreporting.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany