Science Board

With Turkey witnessing its highest increase in the number of coronavirus cases, main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on April 11 urged the members of the Science Board to speak out about the course of the pandemic in Turkey.

"Our Science Board is taken hostage," Kılıçdaroğlu said in a video message he posted on Twitter.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has criticized the government for its management of the economy, saying that small businesses were suffering the most during the pandemic.

Small businesses pay the price of the government's mismanagement, he said while addressing his party members at the parliament on April 6.

The COVID-19 outbreak worsened within a week across Turkey, leaving only one province in the low-risk category.

According to the weekly cases' data for March 13 and March 19, the number of provinces classified as high-risk increased to 39 from the previous week's 25.

Turkey is shifting to what officials dubbed "dynamic supervision model" to inspect the implementation of COVID-19-related measures after the country moved to a controlled normalization phase.

Starting from March 4, tens of thousands of personnel will be mobilized to carry out nationwide checks to see if coronavirus-related curbs are being strictly observed.

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by China's Sinovac Biotech has an efficacy of 83.5 percent based on the final results of Phase III trials, Turkish researchers said on March 3, a downward revision from a preliminary finding of 91.25 percent.

Vaccinations against the COVID-19 in Turkey have proved to be effective, experts have said, noting that fewer people are now applying to hospitals as a result of the inoculations.

Turkey rolled out its massive vaccination program on Jan. 14. Nearly 5.9 million people have been administered the jab since then, mostly health care workers and the elderly.

More transmissible variants of COVID-19 are spreading in Turkey and have already been found in over 30 provinces, experts have warned, adding that the impacts of those variants are yet to be seen.

Turkey may see a surge in COVID-19 cases in the months to come due to the different virus variants found in more than 20 provinces, experts have warned, urging the public to remain vigilant and exercise caution.

Turkey has detected two cases of South African variant and one case of the Brazilian variant of COVID-19, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has announced.

The number of cases related to the U.K variant of the coronavirus has increased to 196, Koca said following the Health Ministry's Science Board meeting on Feb. 3, warning that daily infections are on the rise again.

Health and medical experts have hailed vaccines as being one of the major achievements in the fight against COVID-19, but the number of people refusing to get vaccinated has increased over the course of the pandemic despite the fact that they can prevent the spread of the highly infectious virus.