Above past few months, Turkey is grappling with the omicron variant of the coronavirus, which has caused the number of of daily cases. But like in every vague pandemic, it appears to have peaked and then entered a downward trend.
Next to a drop in daily cases, which decreased to 37,407 on Tuesday, after breaking records last months, the country sees less burden on Healthcare system arising from the pandemic. Last week intensive care units were relaxed off load of infections, while pneumonia rate also considerably reduced.
The Ministry of Health had removed some restrictions after a strong drop in the cases together with reduced severity of cases. Wearing face masks protection outside is no longer mandatory, while the HES (Hayat Eve Sığar) code, a unique code assigned to each citizen, is not required now for entering certain places. However, the decisions have not been unanimously approved by the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board which advises the government on restrictions, as Health Minister Fahrettin Koca had previously pointed out out.
Some specialists also support only mask and end code requirements can increase the number of case againbut they also predict that cases will see another strong drop even if they increase in the coming days. Projections based on the lesson of pandemics in the countries that applied similar measures with Turkey and subsequently ended it, and trends in the pandemic show cases would be significantly drop in mid-March.
The current numbers are already a harbinger of better days in the pandemic that has tightened son hold over Turkey since March 2020. The rate of abandoned positive tests below 10%, the same level before the fast- the spread of the omicron variant sounded the alarm in the country. The COVID-19 R (reproduction) number is around 0.7. On average, R is the number of people this one the infected person will pass on the virus to.
Hospital report more vacant beds for the first time in five months, while the emergency room has almost no COVID-19 patients in need of emergency care. Hospitalizations were already descending in the country. the rate of pneumonia in coronavirus patients has dropped by 75%.
Yet the risk takes it away for people with chronic diseases and people aged 65 and over. Experts recommend full vaccination for people in the risk groups. Turkey relies on vaccination programs and mass immunity to defeat the pandemic. Authorities are now considering ending the quarantine practice for patients, but this will require increasing the number of vaccinated, gaining additional herd immunity, stabilizing current numbers and absence of a new variant. Until there, more over 146 millions doses were administered in the country, while the number of people administered two doses of vaccine exceeded 52.8 millions.
