COVID-19: Workers worry as Iran-Kurdistan Region border closes

HAJI OMRAN, Kurdistan Region – Tour bus drivers and restaurateurs who make their livings at the border between Iran and the Kurdistan Region are worried about losing business while the borders are shut to general traffic for three weeks in a bid to prevent the spread of a new strain of the coronavirus. 

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Ministry of the Interior ordered the borders closed until January 15, in line with a directive from Baghdad. Flights from Iran, and seven other countries with severe coronavirus outbreaks, are also banned.  

“Thousands of people will become jobless,” Mustafa Mahmood, a tour bus driver who used to make six trips a month back and forth between Tehran and Erbil, said at the Haji Omran border crossing on his way back to Iran, where he will wait until the border is re-opened. “It’s a loss for us. It’s a loss for everybody.”

The border will stay open to trade.

A new, more contagious variant of the coronavirus has been spreading in the UK since mid-September. It has also been detected elsewhere in Europe and Australia. 

The Kurdistan Region similarly closed its borders in early 2020 in a bid to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. 

In the Kurdistan Region, 102,581 cases of the coronavirus have been recorded and 3,362 people have died. The daily numbers of new cases in the Kurdistan Region have declined since the highest single-day record of 1,597 on October 27. On Friday, 164 new cases were reported. Worldwide, over 78 million people have contracted the virus and more than 1.7 million people have died, according to World Health Organization numbers. 

The coronavirus pandemic has devastated already struggling economies in both the Kurdistan Region and Iran. 

Translation and video editing by Sarkawt Mohammed