Health Minister says Turkey has learned lessons from mistakes made by Italy and Iran

Health Minister Fahrettin KOCA made a statement saying Turkey had drawn conclusions from the mistakes made by countries where the virus spread rapidly. The minister stated that they had modeled successful samples and Iran on the other hand had not isolates the cases focused in  Qom and Mashhad, causing the virus to spread throughout the country. He also emphasized that Italy had allowed those coming from China to move freely within the country, causing the outbreak to spread throughout Europe.

The minister said they had seen all international flights as risk and put thermal cameras at airports to screen 4 million 600 thousand passengers. On the other hand the number of passengers who entered using ports and passed through thermal screening was 15 thousand 200.

He noted that 1103 of the 189 thousand passengers passed through thermal camera control at land border gates, were placed under surveillance in established field hospitals, and 189 people were referred to the hospital.

In case the disease spreads to the whole country and turns into an epidemic Turkey has over a total of 25 thousand beds that would serve as adult intensive care (both private and state). Still, despite the city hospital beds opened recently, bed number is below the European and OECD averages; 28 beds for 10 thousand people whereas the OECD average is.

The minister shared following:

“We are prepared for possible bad scenarios in terms of physical and technological infrastructure. We have activated the 184 Ministry of Health Contact Center (SABIM) Corona line to address our citizens’ doubts about the disease and to direct them in case of complaints and to provide some services when necessary. The 184 SABIM also has a voice response system. 500 call staff and 100 medical staff are stationed here. The algorithm here is also an algorithm developed by The Science Board”.

We have developed our own diagnostic kit to provide reliable and fast results in the diagnosis of the disease. We received an order for 500 thousand diagnostic kits from America and we delivered them. The domestic diagnostic kit, which has been used in our laboratory for 40 days, became popular in a short time and was sold to other countries,

Soon we’ll be able to run tests in almost every city.