Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey has lost ground in its battle against the coronavirus.
Istanbul:
President Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that Turkey had lost ground in its battle with the coronavirus, but the focus on hygiene, masks and social distancing would protect people and help the economy rebound in the second half .
This month, Ankara opened restaurants and cafes and lifted orders for weekend home stays and most long distance travel bans. But since June 1, new cases of COVID-19 have doubled to nearly 1,600 per day, raising fears of a recurrence.
“The figures for the past few days show that we have lost our position in the fight against the epidemic,” Erdogan said in a TV address. “But we aim to remove the pandemic from our agenda by respecting the rules of cleaning, masking and distance.”
As Turks spread through the streets, parks, shopping malls and vacation spots, face masks were made mandatory in major cities on Thursday. On Friday, new virus cases dropped to just over 1,200, with a total of more than 185,000 cases, the 13th highest
Separate general isolation of several hours was imposed on Saturday so that students can go out to attend high school exams. Some Turks posted photos of crowds near schools on social media and criticized the decision to hold tests.
“Take a good look at these photos … too bad,” said one on Twitter.
A week ago, the main Turkish medical association criticized the decision to relax the restrictions too soon.
Health and government officials told Reuters that a tighter line on social distancing could be adopted even if they said there were no plans to slow the economy, which came out this month -a near stop since mid-March.
Most economists expect the Turkish economy to contract this year.
But Erdogan said the signs of economic recovery have been “fairly strong” since May, adding “we expect a big boost from the second half.”
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
