Turkey Health Minister Fahrettin Koca on Wednesday said that the country will not consider imposing stay-home orders despite the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the country.”
During a press briefing, the minister said,”Fluctuations (of the number of new cases) can occur as seen in many countries of the world. These are fully proportional to the extent of compliance with our measures”.
Turkey’s confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 1,429 to 182,727 in the past 24 hours, and 19 more died, taking the death toll to 4,861, Xinhua news agency quoted the Minister as saying.
Meanwhile, 1,261 patients recovered from the virus in the last 24 hours, raising the total recoveries to 154,640, he noted.
Koca also said 52,901 tests were conducted over the past day, taking the overall number of tests to 2,773,904.
Turkish citizens aged 65 and older were permitted to go outdoors every day while the curfew for those under the age of 18 has been lifted, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.
Marriage halls will open on June 15, while cinemas, theaters and wedding halls on July 1.
Earlier this month, Turkey resumed domestic flights as part of measures towards normalization amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Turkey’s first lockdown was imposed at the weekend on April 11-12, followed by the second on April 18-19, and lastly, four days of curfew on April 23-26.
The country has seen a slight increase in daily COVID-19 cases since it lifted restrictions on June 1.
Meanwhile, the overall number of global COVID-19 cases has topped to over 8.3 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 448,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University.