Turkey has registered a constant recovery rate since week five of the outbreak, and the pandemic is now considered under control, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.
“We have been in steady recovery since week five of the outbreak. Under current conditions, the pandemic is under control,” Koca said during a news conference following a virtual meeting of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board.
Attributing the success to the country’s increased testing capacity and contact tracing, Koca said a team of more than 6,000 personnel worked diligently day and night to map out the contacts of a confirmed COVID-19 patient to prevent further infections early in the outbreak.
“A team consisting of 6,239 members reached out to more than 722,000 people who came into contact with a confirmed patient. Therefore, people who were likely to have contracted the virus were quarantined before they became carriers and further infected others. We stopped the outbreak from further spreading with close follow-ups. If we have solely focused on the patients alone, it would have been a disaster,” he said.
