DM Monitoring
ISTANBUL: Turkey confirmed 1,894 new COVID-19 patients on Tuesday, raising the total number of diagnosed patients to 351,413, the Turkish Health Ministry announced.
Meanwhile, 74 people died in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 9,445. A total of 1,512 patients recovered, raising the total recoveries to 306,939 in Turkey since the outbreak. The rate of pneumonia in COVID-19 patients is 5.6 percent and the number of seriously ill patients is 1,545. Turkey reported its first COVID-19 case on March 11.
Turkey and China have supported each other in the fight against COVID-19. Chinese doctors and medical experts held video conferences with Turkish counterparts to share China’s experience in treating coronavirus patients, protecting medical workers, and controlling the spread of the virus.
Moreover, Turkish authorities started to take drastic actions against violations of the COVID-19 pandemic rules amid the rising number of daily cases.
The Turkish Interior Ministry on Sunday declared that inspections would be carried out non-stop this week across the country to monitor compliance with the COVID-19 rules.
In line with the ministry’s notice, more than 400 teams of some 1,000 personnel have taken to the streets in the country’s most populous city Istanbul, which has recently become the epicenter of the pandemic once again.
The teams have so far inspected over 4,500 public recreational and entertainment facilities across the province, Istanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya announced.
A total of 741 businesses were fined and two others banned from operations for violating the rules such as hygiene, social distancing and wearing masks, he announced on his Twitter account.
Within the scope of the new coronavirus measures, police teams also checked public vehicles throughout the province where public transport is heavily relied on. The capacity in buses, minibuses, trams, and the metro had been reduced by nearly half to curb the spread of coronavirus.
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter that complaints have been increasing about minibus drivers in Istanbul accepting more passengers than the regulated maximum capacity.
During the rest of the week, the controls are expected to focus on beauty salons, coiffeur’s, and barbershops as well as the conditions of those in COVID-19 isolation. On Monday, for the first time in months, the daily number of patients in Turkey exceeded the 2,000 threshold, according to the Health Ministry.
“We can see that masks are not used properly, physical distancing between people is not obeyed, and hygiene rules violated,” Afsin Emre Kayipmaz, a member of Turkey’s Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board, told reporters.
Turkey reported on Monday 2,026 new coronavirus cases and 75 deaths, taking the total number in the country to 349,519 and the death toll to 9,371.
Meanwhile, Turkish police launched on Tuesday wide-scale operations against drug dealers in the northwestern province of Bursa.
Some 600 police officers including those from special operation teams, riot squads and public order units, along with narcotic detection dogs, joined in the operations conducted simultaneously throughout the province, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Many suspects were detained during the raids, Anadolu said, without specifying the number of detainees.
A large number of drugs and unlicensed weapons were seized in the residences of the suspects, it added.
