COVID-19: Kurdistan Region reports over 200 new cases, more than 10 deaths

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On Friday, the Kurdistan Region’s health ministry announced over 200 new coronavirus cases in the previous 24 hours as well as more than 10 fatalities due to complications related to the pandemic.

Health workers conducted roughly 1,635 new tests for the virus during the same period, according to a ministry statement, which reported that 211 tests had come back positive for the highly contagious disease: 70 in Erbil province, 71 in Sulaimani, 13 in Halabja, and 10 in Duhok.

Eleven more patients died, raising the total number of coronavirus deaths across the Kurdistan Region to 305, according to official data.

The ministry also announced that 139 more persons confirmed to have contracted the virus were reported as having recovered within the same 24-hour period.

Since the first confirmed infections in the Kurdistan Region in February, authorities have conducted close to 156,100 coronavirus tests, confirming 8,937 cases, including some 3,211 recoveries and 5,421 cases that are still-active. Nearly 70% of infections in the autonomous region have been concentrated in Sulaimani province, which has suffered over 6,200.

Since late May, after opening its border with Iran, the original epicenter of the disease in the Middle East, Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have been recording increasingly higher numbers of infections and deaths, especially over the past month.

Related Article: WHO: 'Breach' of health regulations, trade with Iran behind new COVID-19 spike in Iraq, Kurdistan

The coronavirus has infected more than 12.3 million people worldwide and killed over 556,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities and underreporting.

Editing by Laurie Mylroie