CENTRAL NEWS
The coronavirus has spread all around Turkey and occupied northern Kurdistan because of the government’s mistakes in containing the disease. It has now lost the opportunity to implement a country-wide quarantine, according to the Turkish Medical Association (TTB).
“Cases and contacts are almost everywhere. After this stage, the opportunity to implement a country-wide quarantine was missed. Locally and regionally, quarantine and isolation can still be applied quickly and decisively in light of epidemiological data,” the TTB said in a statement yesterday.
While the government has been unwilling to declare country-wide quarantine, more than 15 villages and neighborhoods have been quarantined in various parts of the country so far.
Despite calls by both the opposition and the Ministry of Health for a partial curfew, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday (March 27) advised a “voluntary quarantine.”
The TTB said that effective community containment would not be possible while those employed in the private sector have to continue working.
In its statement, the TTB listed mistakes by the government to curb the spread of the virus:
- Although it was learned that the outbreak was in Iran, the border gates were gradually closed and effective quarantine was not applied to those who came from the country.
- Except for body temperature screening, almost no restrictive practices were applied to more than 300 thousand people who came from European countries known to have the disease.
- As relations with the European Union became tense, immigrants, asylum-seekers and refugees living in various cities of the country were sent to provinces bordering Greece by bus. About a week later, they were brought to their former places by buses again.
- Although it was known that there was an outbreak in Saudi Arabia, most of the 20 thousand people who came back from Umrah (Islamic pilgrimage) were not quarantined.
- While schools and universities were closed, military recruitment, discharges and mass prayers were not suspended at the same time.
- Most of the people with symptoms of the disease, who contacted them and health workers who contacted possible Covid-19 patients were not systematically tested.
