Turkey recorded 1,012 new coronavirus cases and 19 deaths in the past 24 hours, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Sunday.

The total COVID-19 recoveries in Turkey hit 194,515 with 1,298 new recoveries in the past 24 hours, while the death toll reached 5,393.

Koca noted that the total number of patients in intensive care was 1,209, as he urged everyone to pay closer attention to taking precautions.

Health care professionals conducted over 45,232 tests for the disease since Saturday, raising the total count to over 3.9 million.

"The cities with the highest number of intubated patients are Istanbul, Şanlıurfa, Ankara, Gaziantep and Konya. Let's follow the rules to get the results we expect," Koca said on Twitter.

Since the normalization process started in June, Turkey has seen fewer drops in the number of new cases, with daily tolls mostly in the 1,000s. Although there has been no major increase in the number of new cases nor deaths, with thousands of people recovering each day, the country recently accelerated efforts to bring the situation under control.

The coronavirus pandemic has claimed over 566,000 lives in 188 countries and regions since it originated in China last December.

More than 12.7 million COVID-19 cases have been reported around the world so far, with recoveries exceeding 7 million, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S., Brazil, Russia and India are currently the worst-hit countries in the world.