Turkey’s coronavirus death toll rises by 126 to 1,769

Duvar English

Turkey’s death toll from the coronavirus rose by 126 to total 1,769 and new confirmed cases rose by 4,353 to bring the country’s total to 78,546, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on April 17.

A total of 8,631 people have recovered from the new coronavirus so far, and the number of tests carried out over the past 24 hours came to 40,270, the minister said.

Koca made the comments during a press conference after chairing a meeting of the Health Ministry's Coronavirus Science Committee in the capital Ankara.

The minister also shared the coronavirus infection data on Twitter.

"The number of our recovered patients will soon exceed 10,000. A balance has arisen between the number of hospitalized patients and discharged patients. The rate of increase in the number of cases is decreasing as we expect," Koca wrote on Twitter.

Turkey is currently treating 1,845 patients in intensive care units, according to official figures.

“With the rising number of tests, the number of cases continues to increase, but the rising speed of the cases has dropped. It will not be surprising to have a flattening in the coming days,” Koca said.

Before the curfew on senior citizens, 35 percent of cases in Turkey were among people who are 65 years old or older, while this percentage dropped to 18 percent after the curfew, Koca said.

The minister's comments came just hours before Turkey's 31 major cities are set to go into full lockdown for a period of 48 hours.

On April 13, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Turkey will impose a fresh lockdown this weekend, after a 48-hour curfew in major 31 cities that ended at midnight on April 12.