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Health Minister Fahrettin Koca acknowledged last Wednesday that it was time for a change in response to a claim by an opposition lawmaker that the government was significantly underestimating the actual number of Covid-19 infections.
His comments angered medical groups who accused the government of hiding the outbreak from the country.
According to the person directly informed about it, the decision not to include infected but untreated people in the total was taken due to the large number of asymptomatic cases identified from extensive population tests.
The decision was made before the ministry on July 29. changed the wording of Covid-19 to report the number of new “patients” rather than new “cases.”
Koca commented on the change in reporting standard when a lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition party cited data from the country’s testing centers that showed infections were nearly 20 times higher than the official figure.
Koca rejected the figures provided by Murato Emiro of the Republican People’s Party, saying that the current phase of the pandemic justified a shift in emphasis from cases to patients.
His defensive stance has come under attack from medical groups who have long accused authorities of distorting the number of cases.
“We have been repeating this for six months. You acted opaquely. You concealed the facts, the Turkish Medical Association said in a statement to the minister.” You have not been able to prevent the pandemic from spreading.
Increasing number of cases
July 29 Turkey notified 942 new “patients” and 963 new “cases” a day earlier.
According to opposition legislator M. Emir, on September 10. the number of new infections was 29,377, incomparably higher than the number of “new patients” announced by the Ministry of Health at 1,512 that day.
“This comparison clearly shows why the ministry made such a decision in July,” Emir said. – The number of positive cases has increased so much that they came up with what is called “number of patients”.
Official data shows that 318,663 people have been identified as “patients” with coronavirus in Turkey since the outbreak began. There were 8,195 deaths during that time.
Shortly after the first confirmed case, Turkey shut down most of its economy in March. Policy makers have adopted a major stimulus program to mitigate the impact on economic activity by gradually reopening the economy starting in mid-summer.
Tourism has suffered, tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue at a time when Turkey urgently needed foreign exchange to increase its reserves.
Gross domestic product contracted 9.9 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the most in a decade.
Who is angry?
The World Health Organization (WHO) has asked Turkey to report all coronavirus cases in case you are concerned that the country is not underestimating the scale of the recent outbreak.
The official data from Turkey only reflects the number of patients in need of treatment and not the total number of people who tested positive. Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca recently acknowledged that the country had stopped publishing the total number of infected people a couple of months ago.
The WHO posted a report on Twitter and called on the Turkish government to follow WHO’s recommendations “to harmonize data collection and response measures.” WHO also wrote that Turkey had been consulted on research methods.
At the end of July, Turkey stopped publishing the total number of people infected with Covid-19 and started publishing only the number of people who tested positive and had symptoms.
According to the country’s Health Minister, the current pandemic situation justifies greater attention to patients.
On Twitter, the Minister thanked Hans Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, for commenting on the results of the Turkish test. Mr. Kluge did not comment on the WHO recommendations to Turkey to update its data collection methods.
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