SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Ministry of health will recommend “full lockdown” to the government as an effort to curb spread of coronavirus in the Kurdistan Region, a health official said on Monday.
Deputy minister of health Rahel Faraidun said the ministry would recommend lockdown and suspension of work at the government institutions to the Supreme Committee to Combat Coronavirus during a meeting of the ministry’s council scheduled for Monday.
“A full lockdown is our first suggestion and we consider it as necessary for the current situation because the Kurdistan Region has entered the red level of coronavirus spread, and we are at a dangerous level,” he told Esta Media Network.
Earlier, Minister of Health Saman Barzinji said the Region had registered 3,559 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, the biggest single-day rise in infections since the pandemic began.
“The Kurdistan Region has passed 20 percent of infection rate, while it was 16% on the weekend,” Faraidun said.
He further said the ministry of health would recommend partial curfew if the first option wasn’t implemented.
Regarding vaccination centers, the official said the number of the centers would be increased to 131 and that Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine would be transferred to the districts as well.
More vaccines would be delivered to the Kurdistan Region next week, he noted.
As of Monday, as many as 170,462 people have been vaccinated in the Kurdistan Region, according to the Iraqi health ministry.
