Data Suggesting That COVID-19 May Have Existed in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq at the Time of the Outbreak in Wuhan Province of China

A highly contagious coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID- 19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (1). Since the first patient was hospitalized in Wuhan, Hubei, China, on December 12th, 2019 (1), more than 5 million cases and 300,000 deaths have been recorded worldwide up to May 18th, 2020 (2). The virus affects the respiratory system of the person, and the patient has the symptoms of fever, cough, fatigue commonly, and having pneumonia with abnormal findings on chest CT (3). Sometimes, sputum discharge, dyspnea, headache, hemoptysis, and in some cases, diarrhea have been reported (3). The first officially confirmed case of COVID-19 was recorded in Sulaymanyaih City, Kurdistan Region, Iraq, on March 1st, 2020 (4). Since then, 397 confirmed COVID- 19 cases, five deaths, and 377 recoveries had been reported (5). In addition, all the five recorded deaths had underlying health conditions and only two of them were hospitalized COVID-19 patient, the rest were confirmed to have died of COVID-19 base on post-mortem examination of the corpses.