Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on Friday for a “voluntary quarantine” in which Turks stay at home except for shopping or basic needs to stem a surge of COVID-19 cases, which jumped by one-third in a day to 5,698, with 92 dead.
“If we don’t want these measures to reach a further stage, we must abide by the voluntary quarantine rules verbatim. What does this voluntary quarantine mean? It means do not leave your house,” Erdogan told a news conference.
The rate of infections in Turkey has outstripped most other countries in the past two weeks, with 2,069 more cases in the past 24 hours, Turkish Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca said earlier on Friday as he called for wider measures to contain the outbreak.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Erdogan also announced an end to all international flights, and said pandemic councils would be formed in Turkey’s 30 biggest cities to take additional precautions if necessary.
“By taking care of social distancing at home and at work, by not using public transportation unless necessary, by not leaving the house apart from fundamental shopping needs, by taking care of our cleanliness, it is mandatory that we increase the effectiveness of these measures,” he added.
The Turkish government said it is not disclosing the location of cases to prevent the risk of increasing transmission rates by encouraging people to move from areas with high rates to places where there are no or few cases.
Ramping up measures against the outbreak, Turkey also limited land and air travel, and banned walks and fishing along the seashore and beaches, as well as jogging in forests and parks on weekends.
Provincial governors could decide to extend the decision to weekdays, Turkish Minister of the Interior Suleyman Soylu told an interview on NTV news channel.
One town and four villages in the Black Sea province of Rize have been quarantined over the outbreak, the local mayor said on Friday, marking the country’s first case of a lockdown.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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