‘Is the number of asymptomatic people at home important for you?’

* Photo: Aytuğ Can Sencar / AA

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Health Minister Fahrettin Koca answered the questions at the Parliamentary Planning and Budget Commission meeting yesterday (November 18).

Indicating that they had been scanning people for the past five weeks and not encountered influenza cases in this period, Koca announced that 12 thousand contract employees would be recruited.

"We are recruiting 12 thousand contracted healthcare personnel with the central placement to be done by the Student Selection and Placement Center (ÖSYM) based on the scores at the Public Personnel Selection Examination (KPSS)," Health Minister Koca said.

Sharing information about the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine research, Koca announced that 10 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed in China might be bought in December and this number might double in January 2021. According to Koca, it is not very likely that the Pfizer vaccine will get licensed in December and, therefore, they estimate that this vaccine will not be ready by this December. He added that talks were underway to buy 25 million doses of this vaccine next year.

The Minister also announced that the vaccine to be produced by Turkey could start to be used in April 2021.

Addressing the issue of flu vaccines as well, Koca said that Turkey procured 1 million 300 thousand flu vaccines last year, 1 million 100 thousand people were vaccinated. This year, 2.3 million vaccines have been procured and 600 thousand people have so far been vaccinated against flu.

Regarding the COVID-positive people who are not considered by the Ministry to be "patients" because "they do not show symptoms", Fahrettin Koca said, "Since July 29, our number of critically ill patients has increased eightfold, the number of deaths has increased by eightfold. Is the number of asymptomatic people at home important for you?"

'Only symptomatic cases are counted'

In his press conference on September 30, 2020, Health Minister Koca previously indicated that they did not add everyone who tested positive for COVID-19 to the number of daily patients and they considered only the ones who showed the symptoms as "patients."

CLICK - Turkey admits not disclosing number of all Covid-19 cases

Until July 29, 2020, the expression of "number of daily cases" was used on the Health Ministry's COVID-19 table. It has then been understood that after this day, it has been changed into "number of daily patients." (EKN/SD)