Coronavirus hits hard in Turkey

Data on COVID-19 infections in Turkey are rising exponentially. The Eurasian country has changed the way in which cases are counted and the number of people affected has risen suddenly, confirming the poor records that various analysts had predicted.

When Turkey changed the way it reports daily COVID-19 infections, it confirmed what medical groups and opposition parties had long suspected: that the Ottoman country is facing a huge surge in infection cases that is calling into question the resilience of the health system. 

The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided this week to report all positive tests for coronavirus, not just the number of patients being treated for symptoms, bringing the number of daily cases to more than 30,000. With the new data, the country went from being one of the least affected countries in Europe to one of the hardest hit by the pandemic. 

This came as no surprise to the Turkish Medical Association, which has been warning for months that previous Executive figures were masking the severity of the spread and that a lack of transparency was contributing to the further spread of the virus. The association claims, however, that the Ministry of Health's figures remain low compared to its estimate of at least 50,000 new infections per day.

No country can report accurate figures on the spread of the disease, as many asymptomatic cases go undetected, but the previous way of counting made Turkey appear relatively well in international comparisons, with new cases per day far below those reported by other European nations. 

Turkish hospitals are overcrowded and medical staff cannot cover everything. Meanwhile, although the health minister, Fahrettin Koca, has set the occupancy rate of intensive care beds at 70%, Ebru Kiraner, who heads the Istanbul-based Association of Intensive Care Nurses, says that the beds in intensive care units in Istanbul hospitals are almost full, and that doctors are struggling to find space for critical patients, as reported by the AP agency.

President Erdogan said, however, that "there was no problem" with regard to the capacity of the hospitals. He blamed the increase in cases on the fact that the population did not follow the health standards that had been set.

Meanwhile, Istanbul's mayor and opposition leader, Ekrem Imamoglu, said 186 people died of infectious diseases in Turkey's largest city on November 22, a day when the government announced only 139 deaths from COVID-19 nationwide. "We can only defeat the outbreak through a process that is transparent," Imamoglu said.

Last week, Erdogan announced a series of restrictions in an attempt to contain the contagion without affecting the already weakened Ottoman economy. The opposition parties denounced these measures as "half-hearted". Curfews were introduced for the first time since June, but the government limited them to weekend nights; the government also closed restaurants and cafes, except for take-out services, and restricted the opening hours of shopping centres, shops and hairdressers.

Turkey would, however, wait two weeks to see the results of the weekend curfews and other restrictions before considering stricter closures, according to the Ministry of Health. 

However, according to local media, the authorities are expected to impose further restrictions as the measures in place since last week are not having the desired effect in curbing the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, the country has agreed to receive 50 million doses of the vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company SinoVac and hopes to start administering it to medical personnel and the chronically ill next month. It is also in negotiations to purchase the vaccine developed by Pfizer in cooperation with the pharmaceutical company BioNTech. In addition, a vaccine developed by Turkey is expected to be ready for use in April and Erdogan said he had also spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the possibility of purchasing a vaccine developed by that country.