CENTRAL NEWS
With the addition of 4,801 patients testing positive for the coronavirus pandemic, Turkey’s total number of patients has peaked at 74,000, placing Turkey at number three in the world’s highest number of cases after the US and France. The Turkish state, though, continues to rig the number of casualties.
In Turkey and Northern Kurdistan in the last 24 hours, 125 people have lost their lives. 4,801 of the 40, 027 tests performed were positive. In total, 643 people have died.
The disclosed figures, albeit fraudulent and not recorded according to the World Health Organization’s code, put Turkey on an upward trend in terms of cases, days, test and mortality rates.
Still, the Turkish government has not been able to increase the number of tests in line with the population, reaching 40 thousand tests for the first time since the start of the outbreak. The total population of Turkey and its occupational borders surpasses 82 million. Considering that each of the 40,000 tests were carried out a different person every time, this would mean 81,960,000 people within Turkey’s occupational borders have not yet been tested.
Outbreak out of control
Emrah Altındiş, a faculty member at Harvard University School of Medicine, working in the Department of Biology at Boston College, spoke to Al-Monitor in relation to 60% of active cases being based in Istanbul, a city of 16 million.
“If we don’t lock down Istanbul right now, the case numbers might increase exponentially in the next four weeks. We will not be able to control the pandemic and we will reach the limits of the health system’s capacity in Istanbul, specifically.”
Altındiş took to Twitter to criticise the Turkish government:
“The lives of our people should not be sacrificed in the interests of a handful of employers. It is the constitutional responsibility of the state to protect its citizens. In infected cities, in non-compulsory sectors, the lives of millions of workers and their families are always at risk. Our death rate for 60-year-olds and over is 20%!
TR is the second country in the world that reported the most cases after the USA. Necessary measures are not taken, we need quarantine in Istanbul immediately. These groundless, optimistic messages promote dignity in society, and drowsiness to further spread the outbreak already out of control.”
Dr. Ozlem Azap, an infectious disease researcher at Baskent University in Ankara, said the fact many workers continue to travel to job sites on weekdays poses a hazard to the wider population, as they can transmit the disease both on the job and at home.
“For economic reasons, the government is not willing to shut factories and manufacturing centers, but this causes a big problem,” Azap told Al-Monitor. “Two-day curfews are not enough to stop the spread.
Spread continues
Working at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Assoc. Dr. Çağhan Kızıl refered to the figures announced by Turkey noting that spread of the pandemic in Turkey is only at the initial progression stages. The Doctor expressed that the virus does not seem to be under control as it is being propagated.
Kızıl made the following evaluations on his twitter account:
“If there is a predictable increase in case and death rates, in intensive care needs – and these are numbers which continue to increase – why is this epidemic treated as if it were under control?”
“The general perception is trying to be created as if the process was handled successfully from top to bottom. If there was such a process – hopefully there was – why is it not shared openly, then the whole world learns and maybe the whole world changes the way it works, but no such data has been revealed yet. ”
The numbers are rigged
The Turkish Medical Association (TTB) Central Council announced that the Ministry of Health did not use the international codes recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) in reporting the coronavirus deaths.
