On the front lines, Iraq’s doctors are contracting the coronavirus by the hundreds, as a rising wave of infections threatens to crush the country’s health-care system. Medical staff who develop symptoms are tested and then ordered back to work, waiting a week for results, fearful that their continued presence is endangering colleagues and patients, hospital staff say. In laboratories that run coronavirus tests, staff members are also falling ill. “Our hospitals are meant to treat people. Instead, they’re breeding the infection,” said Abdulameer Mohsin Hussein, president of the Iraqi Medical Association, an independent body.

The total number of doctors with reported infections has jumped 83 percent since the middle of last week, raising the tally to 592 since the outbreak began in Iraq in March, according to the association. It estimates that the number of infected paramedics is even higher. Iraq’s Health Ministry said Friday that it had recorded a total of 27,352 cases, with 925 deaths.

Most of the stricken doctors live in the capital, Baghdad. Most have returned to work after being tested but before getting results. Facebook pages advocating for Iraq’s medical community show scores of them. “These doctors shared lounges. They shared rooms for sleeping. In the coming weeks, we’ll see the impact of that,” Hussein said.

A doctor named Yasser said that he was one of the first medical professionals in Iraq to contract the novel coronavirus. He quickly got tested and took time off from work at a hospital in Sadr City, a suburb of Baghdad, to fight the disease, his body convulsing as he struggled for breath. “But now it’s all wrong,” he said. “My doctor friends who get it now wait 10 days for test results, even though they know they have it. The management doesn’t care about our safety, they just care that the staff is working.” He spoke on the condition that his family name not be used because he fears reprisal from hospital authorities.