COVID-19 Second Spike as an Aftermath of the Sudden Restrictions Ease: Kurdistan Region of Iraq as an Example

Abstract

The global pandemic Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID‐19) is a contagious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, it has rapidly resulted in over 20 million confirmed cases and more than three quarter million deaths worldwide in less than 9 months. Due to the rocketed spread of the outbreak, early implementation of restrictions including quarantine, lockdown, isolation, social distancing and community containment was recommended to control the outbreak. Based on, in parallel with other countries, authorities in the Kurdistan Region (KR) of Iraq followed the WHO recommendations on restriction towards the outbreak: including strict measures of quarantine, lockdown and curfew to oppose the spread of the disease. Fortunately, these measures paid off its harvest, as a result of 2 months of measures implementation, COVID-19 confirmed cases crashed to zero for about two weeks and the virus was contained typically across the nationwide lockdown and curfew step. However, premature lifting of measures has put the region under storm of the second spike of the infection resulting in a dramatic increase of new cases. Here, we assessed the KR measures in each step and how they affect the infection rate and the spread of the disease.

Keywords

• sars-cov-2
• covid-19 containing
• second spike
• kurdistan region