Turkey says virus outbreak at peak as government weighs easing restrictions
The country’s health minister credits new therapies and contact tracing for a recent decline in new cases, but warns it is still too soon to loosen restrictions on mobility to mitigate the outbreak.
ISTANBUL — Turkey’s coronavirus outbreak has reached its peak, with more than 120,000 cases, and the country is now seeing an improvement in “every indicator,” in part due to innovative drug therapies and extensive contact tracing, the health minister said
But analysts sounded a warning that the nascent improvement could prompt the government to move too quickly to ease social distancing measures and risk another spike in the contagion.
On Thursday, the Health Ministry reported 2,615 new cases of COVID-19 infection. The deaths of 93 people in the last 24 hours brought the death toll to 3,174. The number of recovered patients has reached 48,886, it said.
“I can say that we are in the peak period and have entered a downward trend. But it’s important for this to be lasting. Therefore, distancing remains extremely important,” Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said at a televised news conference late on Wednesday. “Every negative indicator is retreating and every improvement is becoming more prominent.”
