Turkey’s interior minister Suleyman Soylu submitted his resignation on Sunday, taking full responsibility for a botched curfew announcement intended to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Soylu has submitted an offer of resignation to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but his resignation was not accepted, the Turkish Presidency  said in a statement saying Soylu would remain in office. 

“May my country, which I never wished to hurt, and our president, to whom I will be faithful all my life, forgive me,” Soylu said in a statement posted on Twitter.

On Friday, the interior ministry announced a 48-hour curfew across 31 cities. However, the announcement was made just two hours before it was set to take effect. 

The lack of notice sparked mass panic, as people crowded into shops to stock up on supplies. Roads in Istanbul and Ankara were clogged with traffic and long queues formed outside grocery stores and banks.

Istanbul’s opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who has long called on the central government to implement a lockdown, criticized the Istanbul governorship for waiting so long to announce the lockdown and failing to give municipal authorities enough notice. 

Imamoglu also accused the AKP-controlled central government of “politicizing” the country’s pandemic response measures.

Soylu initially brushed off criticism of the poorly-implemented curfew, telling state broadcaster TRT: “People are in a panic and I find this normal but this panic is not necessary.”

Turkey’s coronavirus death toll has risen to 1,198 with 97 new deaths and 481 recoveries in the past 24 hours, health minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted Sunday. The country now has a total of 56,956 infections.

By Shawn Carrié

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Iraqi authorities recorded 34 new COVID-19 cases and four deaths on Sunday, according to the health ministry. 

Fifteen cases were documented in Basra province, 14 in the capital Baghdad, four in Sulaimani, and one in Erbil.

Of the four deaths, one was recorded in Basra province, one in Baghdad, one in Sulaimani, and one in Kirkuk province. 

Thirty-nine people have recovered, including 10 in Najaf, six each in Karbala, Basra and Baghdad, five in Kirkuk, three in Sulaimani, two in Diyala, and one in Erbil.

This brings the total number of the cases in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region to 1,352. Of these, 76 have died and 640 have recovered.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) is investigating reports that some COVID-19 patients are testing positive a second time, after being declared to have recovered and first testing negative.

Investigation comes after 91 patients in South Korea believed to have been cleared of the virus tested positive upon their second check, South Korean officials said on Friday.

“We are aware of these reports of individuals who have tested negative for COVID-19 using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing and then after some days testing positive again,” WHO told Reuters.

“We are closely liaising with our clinical experts and working hard to get more information on those individual cases. It is important to make sure that when samples are collected for testing on suspected patients, procedures are followed properly,” it said.

Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the press that patients may have “reactivated” rather than have been infected with the virus a second time, according to Reuters.

A patient must test negative for the virus in two consecutive tests spaced 24 hours apart, according to the international standards set by WHO.

Similar testing results emerged last month across China, where in Wuhan alone 5-10 percent of patients in the city’s quarantine facilities tested positive a second time after being declared virus free. 

By Yasmine Mosimann
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Turkey does not plan on making a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to relieve the country’s COVID-19 pandemic-hit economy, a presidential spokesman told CNN Turk.

“We do not have the IMF on our agenda...Turkey does not have an agenda of making a new deal with the IMF, no credit or a new standby agreement,” spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told CNN Turk in an interview on Sunday, according to Reuters.

Turkey has been reviewing funding options in recent days, including meeting with the United States to discuss swapping a line with the Federal Reserve, according to Reuters. 

Whether any progress toward a deal with the US was made is unclear.

Turkey’s virus-related death toll rose to 1,101 on Saturday, with 52,167 people in total testing positive for COVID-19, health minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.

By Yasmine Mosimann
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Iran's health ministry on Sunday announced 117 new deaths from the novel coronavirus, bringing the overall official toll to 4,474.

Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour also told a news conference that 1,657 new infections had been confirmed in the past 24 hours, taking the total to 71,686.

Of those confirmed to be infected with COVID-19 and admitted to hospitals, 43,894 have recovered and been discharged, while 3,930 are in a critical condition.

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Some restrictions put in place to contain the spread of COVID-19 may be eased in the Kurdistan Region province of Sulaimani once current restrictions imposed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) end on April 16, according to governor Haval Abubakir.

Only businesses providing essential services, including some pharmacies, bakeries and greengrocers, have been allowed to stay open during the strict, Kurdistan Region-wide lockdown which began a month ago.

But the Sulaimani governorate has deliberated on a two-phase process to ease the restrictions. The first phase would take effect once the current Kurdistan Region-wide lockdown ends on April 16. A second phase, proposed for May 1 onwards, would be implemented if threat of the virus has lessened.

"Coronavirus dangers are still present and the curfew with strict measures will continue [until April 16, when it expires],” Abubakir told Rudaw on Sunday morning. “But in a bid to normalize life, we’re thinking about making it easier  for people to access essentials and services in their neighborhoods without lifting the curfew."
 
As part of the first phase of the governor’s plan, electrical goods stores, fishmongers, launderettes, mechanic garages, money transfer shops and phone and satellite repair workshops would be allowed to open.

Restaurants would be able to deliver food, and private banks would be allowed to open three days a week.

"All of them must be in [local] neighborhoods, not downtown or the bazaar and malls,” Abubakir said.

A second phase could see construction workers and foremen be allowed to return to work and factories with less than 25 staff members be re-opened.

To reduce crowding  - which increases the risk of COVID-19 transmission - the more lenient measures will not apply to larger businesses.

Final say on the proposed ease of measures lies with KRG’s health and interior ministries, the governor added.

The Kurdistan Region has recorded 330 COVID-19 cases, of which 145 have resulted in recovery and four in death.

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Soran opened its doors to a new coronavirus testing center on Saturday, which according to KRG health minister Dr. Saman Barzanji is the first of its kind at the sub-district level in the entirety of Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region.

Previously the area only had the capacity to do less than fifty tests a day and had to send them to Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, for evaluation. However, with the opening of this new center, it is now possible for Soran to conduct about 200 tests daily and receive results on the same day.
 
"This will make it much easier for us and Erbil. In Erbil, there is a lot of pressure on the inspection center, and here we will get the results as soon as possible and be able to do about 200 checks a day," said Jawad Mahdi, the head of the Soran inspection team, to Rudaw on Saturday.
 
Operated by five biologists working voluntarily, the center will be run in coordination with Soran University and the sub-district's health administration.
 
The center has conducted roughly 200 tests since its opening, all of which were found to be negative. Each test costs the center over $130.

By Yasmine Mosimann. Reporting by Bakhtiar Qadir.

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Slow economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) worsened by the "unprecedented dual shocks" of collapsing oil prices and the COVID-19 pandemic must be confronted with increased data transparency by the region's governments, according to the World Bank's economic update for April 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the deterioration of public health, falling global demand for the region’s goods and services, declines in MENA’s domestic supply and demand because of social distancing measures, and the fall in oil prices, the report released Thursday said. The pandemic has decimated global demand for energy, straining the budgets of may oil-producing nations already suffering from a drop in fuel prices to below the cost of production.

"More than any other region, MENA is confronting two distinct but related shocks with the spread of the virus and the collapse in oil prices. The World Bank is ramping up efforts to help governments weather these shocks and leave no one behind," Ferid Belhaj, World Bank Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa, said. "But to bring new hope to citizens, we must learn and change. Across the region, transparency can help lead to growth with enhanced trust in government in the years and decades to come."

The two crises have contributed to a longer term period of slow growth in the MENA, whose economies have also slowed partly because they have dropped their data capacity and transparency since 2005, the report said.
 
"Investing in transparency now will break the vicious cycle of distrust and lack of government accountability in the region," said Rabah Arezki, World Bank Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa Region.

Enacting transparency measures such as public debt and employment reforms will lessen the danger posed by health and economic crises, the report found.

In its breakdown by country, the World Bank said Iraq faces "considerable risks" linked with lower oil prices, the spread of COVID-19, budget financing constraints, political deadlock, and the need for fiscal consolidation. The COVID-19 pandemic has posed "significant risks" to Iran's economy, as has the recent decline in global oil prices and the tightening of US economic sanctions.

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The Kurdistan Regional Government advises anyone in the Kurdistan Region displaying coronavirus symptoms to call its emergency hotline on 122. This service is available in Kurdish and Arabic 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. More information can be found on the government’s website.

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