Minister of Health, Dr. Fahrettin Koca, had a video conference with the World Health Organization's Regional Director for Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge. The two parties discussed Turkey's pandemic response efforts in detail and exchanged information. Kluge congratulated Turkey for its successful response against COVID-19 and noted that Turkey would be the first country for him to visit when travel restrictions are lifted.
At the beginning of the meeting, Koca shared the latest coronavirus data from Turkey and delivered a presentation on comparing the situation before and after curfews. Adding that there was a significant decrease in hospitalization despite new cases, Koca pointed out that in March, 62 patients out of every 100 were being hospitalized and this number decreased to 6.7. Koca continued, "In April, every day around 200 patients were being admitted to intensive care, now this figure has dropped to 50. In April, 140 patients a day were being put on ventilation, while lately, this figure is around 25. Duration of stay in intensive care has increased from 15 days to 1-2 days. The positive impacts of measures are crystal clear."
Highlighting that Turkey achieved digitalization before many countries, Koca also added that all health data could be accessed through a single infrastructure. "Our success also depended on early digitalization", said Koca and continued,"The pilot implementation of serological immunity, where we will test 150 thousand people, was kicked off in June 3. As of June 8, the implementation has become country-wide. The results of this effort will be invaluable. We are ready to cooperate with WHO on that."
In his speech, WHO Regional Director for Europe, Mr. Kluge thanked President Erdogan and the Turkish Government for their act of international solidarity and leadership. Underlining the fact that the aforementioned serological study was the most comprehensive one in Europe, Kluge added that they were following Turkey's experience with hydroxychloroquine closely and waiting for scientific papers. Noting that they were also closely following Turkey's vaccine development efforts, Kluge said, "I would like to thank Turkey once again for offering universal health coverage to refugees."
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