The new year is off to a rocky start as Turkey struggles with the coronavirus pandemic. In one week, the country exceeded all previous peaks in the number of cases, something tied to the fast-spreading omicron variant. On Tuesday, the highest number in nine months were recorded, with daily cases reaching near 55,000, while Health Minister Fahrettin Koca warned against the variant, which "caused the number of cases in Istanbul to exceed half the total number of cases."
Weekly figures announced on Wednesday that the surge continued between Dec. 18 and Dec. 24 and country's northwestern and western provinces led in the rise. Figures, based on average number of cases per each 100,000 people in 81 provinces, show Kırklareli had the highest number at around 468, ahead of Çanakkale, while provinces in the eastern regions had the lowest number of cases. Cases increased in the country's three largest cities, Istanbul, the capital Ankara and Izmir, the December figures show. Istanbul had about 303 cases per 100,000 people. Overall, number of cases increased more than twofold in two weeks.
Professor Alper Şener, a member of Health Ministry's Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board, told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Tuesday that Turkey may see a significant rise in the number of COVID-19 outpatients next month and they expected an extra burden on health care services. "Figures were more stable (in December) but we expect the rise to continue. It appears not possible to stop the surge any time soon," he said, lamenting the fact that people were discarding personal protection measures like wearing protective masks and adhering to social distancing. He also pointed out that there were still a number of people refusing to receive their third dose of vaccines. "Two doses are not sufficient against omicron as we have seen in other countries," he highlighted. Turkey conducts a nationwide vaccination program since January 2021 although it was expanded to all age groups only last summer.
Turkey also experiences a surge in influenza and similar respiratory illnesses, especially among children, something tied to decreased use of masks and lack of other personal measures.
In Istanbul, hospitals are facing a surge in the number of people applying for vaccination and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. Professor Nurettin Yiyit, another member of the Board, says the youth make up majority of new cases and they were also seeing a rise in the number of infected children. "They are more mobile and less compliant with rules," he told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Wednesday.