A center to treat coronavirus in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan March 2020. Photo: Screengrab/Rudaw TV
Updated
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Fourteen new cases of coronavirus recorded in Sulaimani and Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, the ministry of health of Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) said.
The ministry said that 12 cases recorded in Sulaimani on wednesday and 2 cases in Erbil on Thursday.
The new group of patients includes nine women and three men. Five of them are from Halabja, five from Chamchamal, one from Sitak, and one from Said Sadiq.
So far, and according to the KRG ministry of health there have been 190 cases of coronavirus in Iraqi Kurdistan. A total of 61 patients have recovered from COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus infection, and two have died from it.
The World Health Organization has declared the spread of coronavirus, formally known COVID-19, to be a pandemic. The statistics on Thursday morning showed that there are over 937,000 coronavirus cases globally, including more than 47,200 confirmed deaths, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
Meanwhile businessmen in Erbil and Duhok have donated 18 hotels and motels to KRG to boost quarantine capacity for thousands of people thought to be infected with coronavirus.
“Seven hotels in Erbil have been donated by their owners through the ministry of municipality and tourism,” Nadir Rostayi, head of the Kurdistan Region’s tourism board, told Rudaw on Wednesday.
“Among them, Mariana, My Flower, and Darin hotels are offering full service and use their own employees to serve the quarantined people,” he added.
The KRG had already hired Darin Hotel to host quarantined people, but the hotel management “dissolved the contract” and decided to offer its services for free, according to Rostayi.
On Wednesday, Kurdish security (Asayish) officials in Sulaimani province announced the arrest of almost two dozen suspects who were attempting to sneak people and goods into Iraq’s Kurdistan Region from Iran, violating anti-coronavirus travel restrictions and avoiding strict quarantine measures.
“In the context of ongoing efforts to curb the spread of the global pandemic, Asayish forces in Qalat Dizah district managed to arrest 23 individuals who were intending to smuggle people, along with contraband, past medical inspection checkpoints and into the Kurdistan Region.”
The statement mentioned that the defendants were referred to the judiciary according to various articles of the Iraqi Penal Code.
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