Turkey won’t consider lockdown despite increasing COVID-19 cases

Ankara, June 18 (IANS) Turkey will not consider imposing stay-home orders despite the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the country, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.

“Fluctuations (of the number of new cases) can occur as seen in many countries of the world. These are fully proportional to the extent of compliance with our measures,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Turkey’s confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 1,429 to 182,727 in the past 24 hours, and 19 more died, taking the death toll to 4,861, Xinhua news agency quoted the Minister as saying.

Meanwhile, 1,261 patients recovered from the virus in the last 24 hours, raising the total recoveries to 154,640, he noted.

The Minister also said 52,901 tests were conducted over the past day, taking the overall number of tests to 2,773,904.

Turkey reported the first COVID-19 case on March 11.

The country has seen a slight increase in daily COVID-19 cases since it lifted restrictions on June 1.

–IANS

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