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ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey has registered 28,351 new cases of coronavirus in the past 24 hours, including 6,814 with symptoms, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Wednesday, the first time since July Ankara has included asymptomatic cases in total.
The total was by far the highest reported by the government since the start of the epidemic. The previous daily record, which included only symptomatic cases, was 7,381, recorded on Tuesday.
Ankara had only been reporting symptomatic cases since the summer, which critics said masked the true scale of the outbreak.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Koca unexpectedly said Ankara would start announcing the total number.
“As per requests from our staff, we plan to include positive cases that do not show symptoms in the daily table,” he said, adding that around 80% of those who tested positive were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. .
Health ministry data on Wednesday showed 168 people had died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, the highest number since the outbreak began, bringing the death toll to 12,840.
Symptomatic patients totaled 467,730 as of Wednesday, according to data from the ministry’s website. Although the total of cases has not been announced, Koca said it will be included in the table in the coming days.
Separately, he said Turkey had signed a contract to purchase 50 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese company Sinovac Biotech Ltd.
“The important thing here for us to start using vaccines that are known to be effective and reliable. … I think the vaccination schedule could start on December 11,” Koca said.
Sinovac’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine, CoronaVac, triggered a rapid immune response, but the level of antibodies produced was lower than in people who had recovered, preliminary testing results showed.
(Reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun and Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by Catherine Evans and Richard Chang)
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