COVID-19: Kurdistan Region registers over 660 new cases, 20 deaths

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region’s Ministry of Health announced over 660 new cases of coronavirus along with 20 new fatalities in the past 24 hours.

In its daily statement on COVID-19 figures, the regional health ministry said it had completed 4,634 tests across the autonomous region in the past day, 666 of which were positive.

The official statement also noted that there had been 20 deaths during the same period: nine in Duhok province, eight in Sulaimani province, three in Erbil.

There have now been over 43,900 confirmed infections in the Kurdistan Region, 1,592 of them fatal. 

So far, around 28,153 patients have recovered from the coronavirus disease.

It is important to note that a patient classified as a “recovery” means they are no longer actively treated by health professionals, not that they have fully recovered. Increasingly, medical experts recognize that some COVID-19 symptoms, such as chronic fatigue, often continue long after an individual’s formal recovery and that various other symptoms, including significant lung damage, could be permanent.

Today’s figures indicate a decrease following yesterday’s new all-time daily infections of 950 cases.

As Autumn approaches the Kurdistan Region, health officials repeatedly warn residents to adhere strictly to precautionary measures as infections from both coronavirus and seasonal influenzas could co-occur, overburdening the health care system.

The coronavirus has infected more than 31 million people worldwide and killed over 946,000, according to Johns Hopkins University’s database. The actual figures could be dramatically higher due to insufficient testing capabilities or underreporting.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany