Minister admits Turkey has surpassed 1.5 million Covid-19 cases, explains low death figures

Photo: AA

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Turkey's Covid-19 cases have exceeded 1.5 million, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said today (December 9), announcing the country's total count for the first time.

The ministry was only reporting the number of symptomatic cases until late November, hence the total number of cases was not clear.

As the accuracy of the official figures have been questioned by medical organizations and opposition parties since the start of the outbreak, Koca admitted in late September that the ministry was excluding asymptomatic cases from its daily count.

For the past 24 hours, the ministry registered 31,712 more infections, including 6,213 symptomatic cases. The number of total symptomatic patients has exceeded 558,000.

Table: Health Ministry

The death count debate

The country also saw another record high number of daily fatalities as 217 deaths were reported for the past day.

Meanwhile, the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) announced that 204 people died of an "infectious disease" in the past 24 hours.

Amid doubts over the accuracy of the ministry figures, the municipality has been announcing the number of daily deaths caused by an infectious disease since November 22.

When asked why the numbers for the entire country were similar to İstanbul's figures, Koca said all infectious diseases were counted in İstanbul's toll whereas the ministry was only reporting the deaths with a positive PCR test.

The ministry's death count was also discussed at the early period of the pandemic when the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) revealed that Turkey was not using the death codes recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

While WHO recommended two different codes for those who died with a positive PCR test and those who tested negative but received Covid-19 treatment according to clinical findings, Turkey has not been using these codes.

The ministry might not have been reporting those who received Covid treatment but died without a positive test, the association suggested at the time.

CLICK - Does Turkey underreport coronavirus deaths? Here is what we know

CLICK - Software developer finds three times more excess deaths than Turkey's official Covid-19 toll

WHO Europe's Covid-19 Health System Response Monitor also says that "Turkey uses a national definition of Covid-19 without referring to WHO or ECDC definitions."

Minister Koca had avoided going into details about the mortality codes.

Comparison to the first peak

Comparing the current surge of the outbreak to the first peak in April, Koca said, "There is over 5-fold rise in daily number of Covid-19 cases and 55% increase in deaths compared to the previous peak in April."

Turkey confirmed its first coronavirus case on March 11.

Also speaking about vaccination, the minister said Turkey is going to receive 50 million COVID-19 vaccines in phases starting from next few days.

(VK)