Turkey exceeds 40,000 COVID-19 deaths

By Burak Bir and Dilan Pamuk

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's coronavirus death toll has surpassed 40,000, authorities said Friday.

A total of 31,891 cases, including 2,673 symptomatic patients, were confirmed across the country in the past 24 hours, according to the latest Health Ministry data.

Turkey’s overall COVID-19 tally is now over 4.82 million, while the nationwide death toll rose by 394 over the past day to reach 40,131.

As many as 68,183 more patients won the battle against the virus, taking the total number of recoveries past 4.3 million.

More than 47.2 million coronavirus tests have been done in Turkey to date, with 265,287 more done since Thursday.

The latest figures show that the number of COVID-19 patients in critical condition stands at 3,534.

Turkey has so far administered over 22.8 million coronavirus vaccine jabs since a nationwide immunization campaign began on Jan. 14.

More than 13.71 million people have received their first doses of a vaccine, while over 9.1 million people have completed a two-dose vaccine course, according to the Health Ministry’s data.

As a public health measure to fight the virus, Turkey started a complete lockdown starting Thursday evening and lasting until May 17.

The lockdown will cover the remainder of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as well as three days of the Eid al-Fitr holiday.

Since December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed over 3.16 million lives in 192 countries and regions.

Nearly 150.7 million cases have been reported worldwide, with recoveries now over 87.7 million, according to figures compiled by the US’ Johns Hopkins University.