Major Mosul hospital unable to receive more COVID-19 patients

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A major hospital in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, has reached capacity and will not be able to receive any more COVID-19 patients, as cases of the virus surge across the country.

“The bell of danger is ringing, as a result of a sharp increase in the number of coronavirus infections,” reads a Friday statement from Nineveh province’s crisis cell announcing that al-Shifa hospital was full.

Iraq is seeing a third wave of the virus as the more contagious Delta variant spreads through the country.

Health officials are warning of the devastating effect the recent upsurge in coronavirus cases may have, as the country registered record-high daily numbers earlier in the week with 9,883 new coronavirus cases on Monday.

Health officials and experts confirm that the Delta variant spreads faster, causing severe infections among young people as well as children, Iraq’s Ministry of Health said in a statement.

Hospitals and health centers have witnessed the overcrowding of patients, as well as an “increase in critical cases, among them young people,” reads the statement noting that the rate of death is growing at a dangerous rate.

The ministry warned in late June that the country was entering a "more severe and dangerous" wave of the pandemic.

Kirkuk Health Director Nabil Hamdi Bushnaq told Rudaw on Thursday that the health ministry will face difficulties meeting the demand for oxygen and beds for patients.

Iraq’s health sector has been left dilapidated, after years of endemic corruption.

At least 64 people were killed when fire tore through a hospital for coronavirus patients in Nasiriyah overnight, the second deadly blaze in Iraq’s beleaguered health care sector this year.

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