“Make no mistake, the pandemic is not over” is the common opinion of health experts, but they are more optimistic about the decline of coronavirus cases. The long days of summer may be a cure, so to speak, to further decrease the number of cases, as has been the trend in the past two years.
“We will see lower figures in June,” professor Mustafa Necmi Ilhan, a member of the Health Ministry’s Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board, said. Since 2020, the board has been making recommendations to the government on restrictions on daily life to fight against the pandemic more effectively. In the early days, it used to convene almost every week, issuing new warnings. But today, it is less active, thanks to a steep decline in the daily cases, at 6,893 as of Monday and lower fatalities, at 28.
The dramatic drop in the daily numbers, from around 100,000 just a few months ago, even encouraged Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, who had long adopted an extremely cautious tone throughout the pandemic, repeatedly appealing to the public to adhere to protective measures. “We are going back to the days when you did not know who Fahrettin Koca is,” the minister, who became a household name in Turkey during the pandemic, joked in a tweet on Sunday.
The sudden change in the situation is no miracle for Turkey, which strived to keep the cases at a minimum at the cost of damage to the economy and collective mental fatigue with bans constricting daily life. Combined with a natural switch of the virus to the less lethal strain omicron, which has dominated the cases in Turkey since last year, the restrictions, as well as mass vaccination, paid off in the long run.
Ilhan told Ihlas News Agency (IHA) Tuesday that Turkey may maintain the current momentum in the number of cases if people continue adhering to personal measures and people, particularly those in “risk groups” – the elderly citizens and those with chronic illnesses, get properly vaccinated. Personal measures are wearing protective masks, maintaining social distancing and adhering to hygiene rules. Masks are still ubiquitous as they are mandatory in crowded indoor venues as well as in mass transit, though an outdoor mask rule was recently scrapped. As a matter of fact, the indoor mask rule is the tightest restriction currently in Turkey, which had introduced lockdowns and curfews throughout the pandemic.
Ilhan warned that though the coming days may alleviate the impact of the pandemic, the public should exercise caution, especially during Ramadan Bayram (Eid al-Fitr). The Islamic holiday, which will be marked starting on May 1, is an occasion for family get-togethers, where children traditionally visit their elderly parents and/or grandparents. Ilhan urged the public to keep their masks on during their visit to the elderly and keep the visit short if they are indoors. “The elderly citizens should also have their missing shots. The pandemic is still a reality and though fatalities are low, they include the people of advanced age who missed their vaccines,” he said.
He said everywhere, except in Asia, the number of cases has dropped substantially. In Turkey, he noted the difference between the current figures and figures in early January, when the number of cases fluctuated at around 65,000 and the average number of daily fatalities were around 141. Ilhan was among the experts who had voiced hope in terms of the course of the pandemic one month ago and says their predictions came true.
“We knew that the omicron variant would lose its impact and a downward trend would prevail. This is what is happening now. In May, especially after the bayram, we will see better figures. But this also depends on continuing our personal measures,” he added. The number of coronavirus cases has dropped sharply as people spent their summer holidays in secluded spots after some restrictions limiting their mobility were lifted.
Professor Tevfik Özlü, another member of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board, said the coronavirus has mutated to a stage where it has lost the ability to make people severely sick. “But it is still unrealistic to think that the pandemic or the virus would completely disappear one day,” he told Demirören News Agency (DHA) Tuesday. Özlü said it appears that the virus largely mutated into an epidemic form. “The pandemic is not over but we are largely back to our pre-pandemic lives. You can do many things you could not during the pandemic,” he concluded.
