In the stores and buses of Iraq masks are rare even as Covid-19 spreads widely, vaccines are viewed with suspicion and the sick see hospitals as a last resort, AFP reports.
At Al-Shifaa Hospital in the capital Baghdad, the ramifications are clear. “More than 95 per cent of those sick with Covid-19 in intensive care are unvaccinated,” said Ali Abdel Hussein Kazem, assistant director of the facility.
Iraq has recorded more than 2.2 million infections and 24,000 deaths since the pandemic began two years ago, but data released by the authorities indicates that infections are now declining to around 2,000 new cases per day.
