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ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – When Turkey changed the way it reports daily COVID-19 infections, it confirmed what medical groups and opposition parties have long suspected – that the country is facing an outbreak alarming case that is rapidly depleting the Turkish health system.
In an about-face, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week resumed reporting of all positive coronavirus tests – not just the number of patients treated for symptoms – pushing the number of daily cases to over 30,000. According to the new data, the country has gone from one of the least affected countries in Europe to one of the most affected.
This did not surprise the Turkish Medical Association, which has warned for months that previous government figures concealed the seriousness of the spread and that lack of transparency was contributing to the surge. The group maintains, however, that the ministry’s figures are still low compared to its estimate of at least 50,000 new infections per day.
No country can report exact figures on the spread of the disease because many asymptomatic cases go undetected, but the previous counting method made Turkey look relatively easy in international comparisons, with new daily cases much lower than those. reported in European countries including Italy, Great Britain and France.
That changed on Wednesday as Turkey’s daily workload nearly quadrupled from around 7,400 to 28,300.
Hospitals across the country are overcrowded, medical staff are exhausted and contract tracers, who were once credited with monitoring the outbreak, are struggling to keep up with transmissions, Sebnem Korur Fincanci, who heads the association, told reporters. the Associated Press.
“This is the perfect storm,” said Fincanci, whose group has been attacked by Erdogan and his nationalist allies for questioning the government’s numbers and its response to the outbreak.
Even though the Minister of Health has set the intensive care bed occupancy rate at 70%, Ebru Kiraner, who heads the Istanbul-based Association of Intensive Care Nurses, said the beds in the intensive care units Istanbul hospitals are almost full as doctors scramble to find room for critically ill patients.
There is a shortage of nurses and the current nurses are exhausted, she added.
“The intensive care nurses have not been able to resume their normal lives since March,” she told the AP. “Their children haven’t seen their faces without masks for months.”
Erdogan, however, said there was “no problem” with the capacity of the hospitals. He attributed the outbreak to the public not wearing masks, which is mandatory, and not following social distancing rules.
Demonstrating the severity of the outbreak, Turkey last month suspended healthcare workers’ leave and temporarily banned resignations and early retirements during the pandemic. Similar bans were also put in place for three months in March.
Official daily deaths from COVID-19 have also risen steadily to record highs, reaching 13,373 on Saturday with 182 new deaths, in a reversal of fortune for the country that had been hailed for having successfully kept the death toll low level. But these record figures also remain contested.
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said 186 people died from infectious diseases in the city on November 22 – a day on which the government announced just 139 deaths from COVID-19 for the entire country. The mayor also said that around 450 burials take place every day in the city of 15 million people, up from 180 to 200 on average recorded in November of the previous year.
“We can only defeat the epidemic through a transparent process,” said Imamoglu, who belongs to Turkey’s main opposition party. “Russia and Germany have announced a high number of deaths. Has Germany lost its luster? Has Russia collapsed? “
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca rejected Imamoglu’s claims, saying: “I would like to stress that all the figures I am providing are correct.”
Last week, Erdogan announced a series of restrictions aimed at containing contagion without affecting the already weakened economy or business activity. Opposition parties denounced them as “half-baked”. It introduced curfews for the first time since June, but limited them to weekend evenings, closed restaurants and cafes except for take-out services, and limited the opening hours of centers shopping, stores and hairdressers.
Fincanci and Kiraner said the measures don’t go far enough to contain the transmissions.
“We need a total foreclosure of at least two weeks, if not four weeks, which science considers the most ideal amount,” Fincanci said.
Koca said the number of critically ill patients and deaths was on the rise and said some cities, including Istanbul and Izmir, were experiencing their “third peak”. Turkey would, however, wait two weeks to see the results of weekend curfews and other restrictions before considering tighter lockdowns, he said.
Meanwhile, the country has reached an agreement to receive 50 million doses of the vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company SinoVac and hopes to start administering it to medical staff and the chronically ill next month. It is also in talks to purchase the vaccine developed by Pfizer in cooperation with pharmaceutical company BioNTech. A vaccine developed by Turkey is expected to be ready for use in April.
Erdogan said he had also spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the possibility of obtaining a vaccine developed by that country.
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Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul contributed to this report.
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