Partially opened in August, Konya City Hospital was formally inaugurated by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Friday in the eponymous central province. It is the 16th city hospital Turkey has opened recently as part of its new health care concept. The opening comes at a time of heightened need for more beds as the country combats the coronavirus pandemic.

A sprawling complex with 1,250 beds, including 256 intensive care beds, the hospital is actually a composite of multiple hospitals specialized in different branches of medicine.

Located at the heart of Konya, which is situated south of the capital Ankara, the hospital boasts 380 clinics and 49 surgery rooms over a space of 421,566 square meters (104 acres). A trigeneration system ensures the complex’s power supply is uninterrupted.

The hospital started operating with 838 beds on Aug. 5 and has since seen an immense flow of patients and about 6,000 surgeries. More importantly, it relieved other hospitals in the province of patient overload by serving as the main hospital to treat patients for diseases and illnesses other than COVID-19.

"City hospitals are the peak of our health care system, and Konya hospital is among the biggest of them," Erdoğan said at the opening ceremony.

Speaking at the ceremony, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Turkey saw a decline in cases while the country's hospital bed capacity was not overwhelmed, citing that COVID-19 patients currently occupied 44% of total hospital beds. "Investments in health care, a strong infrastructure and devoted health care workers who make sacrifices in the face of the outbreak help us to carry out a more efficient struggle against the pandemic," Koca said.

Turkey’s health care system, which has undergone a major transformation since the early 2000s, is credited with an exemplary fight against the outbreak. Along with widespread access to imaging, city hospitals that serve as modern medical complexes boost Turkey’s health care capacity in a time of crisis. When the pandemic broke out, Turkey had 1.1 million health care workers, 246,000 hospital beds and 40,000 intensive care beds. The country sped up the construction and opening of new hospitals amid the outbreak to address the burden of the disease on the health care sector.

The city hospital project is part of the government’s ambition to increase bed capacity and address a shortage of doctors in cities with a high population density. They are mainly located in suburban areas and operated with a private-public partnership model. They are leased to private companies, and the government pays a fee for medical imaging, laboratories, security, maintenance and health care workers' salaries.

Recoveries exceed 281,000

Turkey recorded 1,407 new COVID-19 cases and 67 deaths in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said Thursday. The total number of cases has reached 320,070 with 281,151 recoveries, according to the ministry. With the 67 new fatalities, the death toll from the virus reached 8,262. A total of 113,546 more coronavirus tests were conducted over the past 24 hours, bringing the total to over 10.49 million. The figures also showed that the number of patients in critical condition dropped slightly to 1,507, with 6.4% developing pneumonia.

The latest weekly report by the Health Ministry shows more than 768,000 tests were conducted on Sept. 21-27 while 3,612 patients were hospitalized. Tests and the number of patients discharged from hospitals increased compared to the previous week while the number of new patients and hospitalizations decreased. Overall, there was an average of 13.9 patients per 100,000 in that period and the majority of them were males. Children or those at the age of 15 and below make up 6.5% of all patients, while people between the ages of 15 and 24 constitute 14% of all patients.

Professor Mustafa Necati Ilhan, a member of the Health Ministry’s Social Sciences Board, which was set up to address social concerns regarding the outbreak, says people between the ages of 15 and 49 make up the majority of new cases. This points to a reversed trend in new cases, as the virus’s first victims in Turkey were mostly elderly patients.

Ilhan told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Friday that younger age groups are currently "superspreaders" of the coronavirus. "These are the people who spend the most time outdoors and disregard the rules most," he warned.

Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry stepped up restrictions on Friday upon the suggestion of the Health Ministry. Under a new set of measures, the ministry ordered the postponement of all activities and events by nongovernmental organizations, vocational chambers, unions and other groups to Dec. 1.

The ministry said in a statement accompanying the list of new restrictions that the pandemic still prevailed and Turkey was looking to control the outbreak by following scientific developments and experiences and updating regulations and rules.

"Although the number of cases is under control at a certain level, it is expected that the frequency of respiratory illnesses transmitted by droplets is projected to increase, especially in autumn and winter, both in our country and the world. Thus, the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board of the Health Ministry has suggested postponement of events where maintaining social distancing will be difficult," the statement added.

The new restrictions will affect bar associations most. Bar associations across the country were set to elect new delegates earlier this month, before electing a new president of the Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB) in December.