Turkey on Sunday recorded 15 COVID-19 deaths, 1,356 new cases and 1,413 recoveries in the past 24 hours, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced Sunday evening.

Koca said that while the number of new cases dropped by 16 from a day earlier, the number of recoveries also dropped by 571.

"We are not fast enough in reducing the number of cases and not fully cautious in the fight," he wrote on Twitter. "Summer should not be a cause of complacency."

The newest figures brought the national coronavirus death toll to 5,097, while the total number of cases rose to 197, 239.

Currently, 996 patients are in intensive care units and 381 are intubated, according to the Health Ministry statistics.

In the past 24 hours, 48,309 tests were performed, bringing the total number of tests above 3.28 million.

Despite the troubling increase in daily new infections since the normalization process began, Turkey has managed to nurse more than 85% of its coronavirus patients back to health.

Since easing or completely removing most restrictions on June 1, Turkey subsequently witnessed a spike in daily new coronavirus cases, with the number of new cases increasing as much as twofold in two weeks.

While Koca has assured the public that the local fluctuations in case numbers are not yet a second wave, he and the country’s Coronavirus Science Board have warned that the surge in new infections is not to be ignored and continuation of the increase could mean a serious setback in the fight against the outbreak.