In a press conference in Qamishli, Kurdish health board co-chair Jwan Mustafa reportedly said that three women and a man had tested positive for Covid-19 out of ten people who were tested.
"This brings the total number of coronavirus cases in northeast Syria to six, including the two cases announced in April," he was quoted as saying by Rudaw, is a media group in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Mustafa advised caution, saying "the virus is among us and we are at a serious stage."
With only a couple of thousand PCR testing kits available, Rojava Information Center (RIC) – a local monitor group –has warned the region's health officials to test selectively due to the limited number of kits.
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Restaurants, religious gatherings, weddings, ceremonies and funerals are all prohibited, Rojava said.
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In regime-held areas, the total number of recorded cases reached 584, after the Health Ministry announced 23 more infections on Thursday. A total of 174 have recovered, while 35 have died, according to official statistics.
"The new flare up of cases in northeast Syria is extremely serious due to the fact that these individuals are not related to each other. This indicates that there has been some spread of the virus," Thomas McClure, a Syria-based researcher at the Rojava Information Center, told Kurdistan 24.
The New ArabComments