Turkey reports highest new Covid-19 cases in a month

Photo: AA

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

The Health Ministry has reported 1,178 new coronavirus cases for the past 24 hours, marking the highest number since July 2. 

"We must prevent the risk during the feast [Eid] and holiday to cause new consequences. We need unity in measures," Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter, repeating his words from yesterday's update.

"Yesterday, the number of our new patients increased by 88 compared to the previous day and today, it increased by compared to yesterday," he noted.

The increase in new cases came six days after the start of the Sacrifice Feast (Eid al-Adha) on July 31. The incubation period of the virus is stated as from six to 14 days.

Nineteen people have lost their lives, bringing the death toll to 5,784 while 1,015 have recovered from the disease since yesterday's update.

The total number of patients has climbed to 236,112. With 219,506 recoveries, the number of active cases stands at 16,606.

According to the ministry figures, 8.4 percent of the patients have pneumonia while there are 582 "severely ill" patients.

The ministry does not give a definition of "severe illness," a category it introduced on July 29, when it stopped the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care following a sharp increase in the need for critical care over the past two months.

Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus tests exceeded 5 million with 53,842 over the past day.

(VK)