Turkey COVID-19 death toll now 725, ‘Bed occupancy rate has not reached 50 percent yet’

By NewsDesk @infectiousdiseasenews

Today, Turkey Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca announced there were 76 additional COVID-19 fatalities in the past 24 hours, bringing the total fatalities to 725.

He also announced that of the more than 20,000 tests performed in the past day, more than 3,000 were positive.

To date, 34,109 total coronavirus cases have been reported.

Minister Koca made the following statement regarding intensive care and bed occupancy rates:

“The total intensive care occupancy rate for Covid-19 and other patients is 62 percent. 38 percent is still empty. Our bed occupancy rate has not reached 50 percent yet. However, I would like to say that we are planning to construct a hospital with a thousand beds on two sides of Istanbul for precautionary purposes and to use it for other purposes tomorrow ”.

“Any success achieved against the coronavirus is owed to isolation”, said Koca and continued, “This is how we were able to prevent the importation of the disease into Turkey. Our primary weapon of defense has been isolation. Isolation becomes more and more important every day. The main objective is to prevent the spread.”

Underlining that we were going through times of patience and endurance, Koca continued, “These days are going to pass. The more effort we put in today, the more we will be proud of ourselves tomorrow. We will succeed, undoubtedly. This is a battle of public health. Our goal is to come out of this battle with minimum casualties and contain transmission early. Let’s not give the virus the upper hand in this battle. I invite you to be the heroes of a public health battle. You will acieve this by isolating and protecting yourselves.”



