Turkey fails to disclose official data on asymptomatic COVID-19 infections

The Turkish government announced that the official data released daily on positive cases of coronavirus does not include patients without symptoms, so the actual number of infections may be much higher, the BirGün newspaper reported. 

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca made the clarification after local journalists detected that the government had changed its daily published figure on the pandemic from "cases" to "patients". 

“Not every case is a patient,” he said. “Because there are people who receive a positive test result but show no symptoms. These [cases] make up the vast majority.”

The health official also denied accusations by opposition parties and the Turkish Medical Association that the actual number of coronavirus cases is ten to twenty times higher than the official figures declared by the Turkish government. 

The deputy of the Republican People's Party (CHP) Murat Emir posted on his Twitter account on Tuesday a screenshot of an alleged internal Health report, showing that the number of coronavirus cases was far higher than the figures made public. 

Specifically, Emir showed the figures from September 10th in which 158,000 tests were carried out, of which supposedly 29,377 were positive. However, the government's published figure that day was 1,512 cases. 

The number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in Turkey has tripled in recent weeks, rising from an average of 20 deaths a day to over 60, according to official data. 

Health officials recently announced that the country is in "the second peak of the first wave" of the coronavirus pandemic, with an official average of 1,500 cases per day.