Number of seriously ill coronavirus patients on the rise, says Health Minister

Duvar English

Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Aug. 11 said that there is a spike in the number of seriously ill coronavirus patients.

“There has been a 32 percent decrease in hospitalization for the last three days. However, the increase in the number of seriouslly ill patients, which is one of most important indicators of the process, continues,” Koca wrote on Twitter, citing the Health Ministry's data.

Koca also said that Istanbul, the capital Ankara, the Central Anatolian province of Konya and the southeastern provinces of Diyarbakır and Şanlurfa have registered the highest number of COVID-19 patients in the last three days.

Turkey on Aug. 11 confirmed 1,183 more cases of COVID-19, raising the tally to 243,180. The death toll rose to 5,873 after 15 more people died over the last 24 hours.

Earlier in August, the Health Ministry removed the number of intensive care unit patients and intubated patients from its daily briefings, and added instead pneumonia rate among patients as well as the number of so-called seriously ill patients.

The Health Ministry's move was slammed by the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), which said that such a change in the COVID-19 parameters leads to suspicions that the coronavirus epidemic is getting worse in the country.

The country’s daily COVID-19 cases have recently shown a sharp rebounding trend, with more than 1,000 daily jump in successive days. Daily COVID-19 cases had hovered just below 1,000 from July 13 until Aug. 3.

Diyarbakır experiencing spike in COVID-19 cases following Eid al-Adha, says governor

Meanwhile, the governor of the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on Aug. 11 said that the province has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases following the four-day-long Eid al-Adha holiday between July 31 and Aug. 3.

“There is an increase in the number of [COVID-19] figures in Diyarbakır after the Eid al-Adha. As the time has passed, people have developed the understanding that 'nothing will happen to us,'” Diyarbakır Gov. Münir Karaloğlu said, during a visit to a group of shopkeepers in the province.

Members of Health Ministry's Coronavirus Science Committee have recently said that citizens have failed to comply by the measures in place to contain the virus during the Eid al-Adha holiday. They said that the country might see this situation's effects in two weeks time and face a serious surge in infection cases.