It took less than two months for Turkey to construct two fully equipped hospitals in Istanbul in response to the emergency stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Istanbul was a hot spot of the pandemic then with the highest number of cases. For hospitals, which gave a lifeline to the health care system in the city, the burden of treating coronavirus cases is now gradually easing.

Their administrators say that they could always function as "emergency hospitals" in case of a new surge in the pandemic or any other future situation but, in the meantime, they will mostly cater to patients suffering from other illnesses.

The hospitals, named after professors Murat Dilmener and Feriha Öz, two prominent physicians who succumbed to the coronavirus, were constructed in Yeşilköy on Istanbul’s European side and Sancaktepe on the Asian side.

Professor Gökhan Tolga Adaş, chief physician of Professor Murat Dilmener Emergency Hospital, says they provide health care services to people suffering from other illnesses and conditions nowadays but there are "plans in place" that can convert the hospital into an emergency hospital "in just a few hours" in the event of a new pandemic or disaster.

The two hospitals have served more than 1 million outpatients and over 50,000 patients who needed hospitalization, including some 9,000 patients in need of intensive care, since they opened two years ago. Today, there are less than 50 COVID-19 patients in both hospitals while the number of people in intensive care due to the coronavirus is around 20. Intensive care units, the main components of the hospitals in the early days of the pandemic since the initial strain required intensive care, are now open to other patients. Surgery rooms have also been opened.

Health authorities hope that they will add to the capacity of hospitals in Istanbul, especially at a time when hospitals are expecting an influx in light of decreasing coronavirus cases. Authorities and experts say most people avoided visiting hospitals over the two years of the pandemic and some even delayed their surgeries throughout this period. With a drop in the cases, hospitals are again viewed as "safe" and more patients are expected to apply, putting a strain on the health care sector whose members worked long hours and mentally suffered during the tough times of the pandemic.

Though they are informally dubbed "pandemic hospitals," the two facilities are more than that, with wards and surgery rooms for different branches, from internal medicine to maternity wards and interventional radiology. In Murat Dilmener hospital, the number of "non-COVID-19" admissions has already risen to around 800 daily.

Adaş told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Thursday that they had admitted more than 17,000 coronavirus patients since the hospital was opened and they also served as a center for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. "We used to have more than 3,000 admissions daily at the height of the pandemic (including patients requiring hospitalization and examination, as well as tests) and some 150 people were hospitalized on average. Today, we only have about 45 patients," he stated. He said they were planning to expand their services in the wake of the decline in admissions due to coronavirus and their first new branch would be a polysomnography lab. "Our facilities, however, will remain open for emergency situations and we already have a lodging facility for some 340 health care staff who can return to working here without leaving the premises if the need arises (as it did in the pandemic)," he said.

Associate professor Alpaslan Tanoğlu, chief physician of Feriha Öz hospital, says they have been going through the "quietest days" since opening. "We are focusing our efforts on how best we can serve after the COVID-19 pandemic. Our hospital will play an active role in addressing the backlog of other cases," he said. Tanoğlu said that their hospital and the Murat Dilmener hospital can even serve as "health tourism" hospitals once everything "fully returns to normal."

COVID-19 case numbers dramatically dropped in Turkey this month. On Wednesday, the number of cases was 3,668 and fatalities were 18, a far lower figure compared to around 100,000 just a few months ago. The sudden change in the situation is no miracle for Turkey, which strived to keep the cases at a minimum at the cost of damage to the economy and collective mental fatigue with bans constricting daily life. Combined with a natural switch of the virus to the less lethal strain omicron, which has dominated the cases in Turkey since last year, the restrictions, as well as mass vaccination, paid off in the long run. To counter the spread of the virus, Turkey has administered over 147.32 million COVID-19 vaccine doses since it launched an immunization drive in January 2021.