COVID-19: Kurdistan announces over 330 cases; new decision on schools
The Kurdistan Region’s health ministry announced over 330 new cases in the past 24 hours as the government announced new regulations for elementary and high school grades due to the current coronavirus pandemic, according to a statement.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s health ministry announced over 330 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours as the autonomous region of Iraq released new regulations for students attending elementary and high school as the global pandemic continued.
Health authorities also announced 17 deaths resulting from the disease, bringing the total number so far to 3,186.
New regulations
The Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) committee tasked with assessing the situation of the evolving health crisis issued the new set of rules for students enrolled in first, second, and twelfth grades whose in-person classes had previously been halted temporarily due to alarming spikes in coronavirus cases. According to the new announcement, their classes will now remain closed until Jan. 7.
The classes will be conducted online, as was already the case with the other grades.
As for higher education classes, those students in the scientific field will continue their studies via a hybrid combination of partial online classes with in class sessions. Humanities programs, the statement noted, would continue their studies remotely.
COVID-19 Figures
In their daily coronavirus update, officials from the regional health ministry announced that, over the previous 24 hours, results for 331 patients came back positive for the disease out of more than 4,118 tests that were completed in that period.
In contrast, 338 patients recovered across the region, according to health authorities, raising the number of recoverees to 61,026 cases.
It is important to note that a “recovery” only indicates that a patient is no longer being actively treated by health professionals—not that they have fully recovered from the disease.
The Kurdistan Region has witnessed an overall decrease in the number of new daily virus infections, after weeks of alarming surges in cases, reaching as high as 1,600 in a single day.
The region has seen 97,336 COVID-19 cases to date, per official figures.
Officials have attributed the recent spike in the number of patients—at times over 1,000 new daily cases—primarily to the public’s failure to follow mandated health measures to stem the spread of the disease.
Editing by John J. Catherine