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For fear of travel warning: Turkey reveals the dramatic Corona case numbers far too late

2020-12-01T13:24:34.413Z


For months, Turkey published embellished numbers of new corona infections - probably to avoid international travel warnings. Indeed, the situation is appalling.


For months, Turkey published embellished numbers of new corona infections - probably to avoid international travel warnings.

Indeed, the situation is appalling.

For a long time there had been fears that the numbers for new corona infections in Turkey might not be correct.

Now the true extent is known: According to media reports at a press conference on Wednesday evening and the next day, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said that

more than 29,000 new infections

were reported

on Thursday (November 26) alone

.

The previous day there were 28,351.

The beds in some hospitals were slowly becoming scarce, so the appalling admission.

In doing so, the government deceived not only international tourists, but also locals.

+

Holiday regions in Turkey escaped a travel warning for a long time.

© dpa / Can Merey

Huge difference: Corona numbers in Turkey are far higher than expected

How big the difference is can be seen from the number of new infections last reported to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC): Here we are talking about just under 7,000 cases per day.

In truth, however, they are

four times as high

.

In Germany there are currently around 22,000.

On July 29, Koca said he began to adjust the corona infection numbers.

From then on, he no longer reported all

those

who tested positive, but

only those who actually developed symptoms

and required treatment.

In this way, around 350,000 corona infections were concealed by the end of October alone, as Der Spiegel wrote, citing estimates by the Turkish Medical Association.

The Minister of Health named “national interests” as the reason for his action.

At the latest when Koca

said

in an interview with the

Habertürk

newspaper a few weeks

ago

about 100,000 PCR tests a day, 10 percent of which would be positive, it was clear that there was something wrong with the numbers.

After all, at least 10,000 new infections would have had to be reported - but officially there were only 1,400 at the time.

Shortly afterwards, the World Health Organization (WHO) also asked the government to provide the correct infection numbers.

Nevertheless, it still took four weeks to comply with this request.

Also interesting

: Special entry rules: Popular holiday destination is now sifting tourists out based on their salary.

Turkey escapes international travel warnings with embellished corona numbers

Last Friday (November 20), the Turkish government announced a partial lockdown and thus indirectly betrayed the precarious situation.

Since then, restaurants and cafes have been closed.

There is a general curfew on weekends from Friday at 8 p.m. to Sunday at 10 a.m.

According to

Tagesspiegel,

the

prominent journalist Ismail Yilmaz accused

the television station

Habertürk

: “We have been cheated on.” In his opinion, the government lied to the citizens in order to save the holiday season and spare the economy from the consequences of curfews.

In the meantime, however, numerous travel warnings have been extended to the holiday regions of Turkey.

According to the Federal Foreign Office, they have been risk areas since the end of October.

* Merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen digital editorial network.

Also read

: Popular holiday destination will probably only allow European tourists to enter again in a year.

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List of rubric lists: © dpa / Can Merey

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2020-12-01

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