Turkey reports 19 daily COVID-19 deaths as recoveries near 200,000

Turkey's coronavirus death toll on Monday increased to 5,382 with 19 new fatalities, while recoveries neared 200,000 as 1,156 more patients recuperated from COVID-19.

Announcing the country's daily coronavirus figures on Twitter, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 1,008 new infections were found in 46,492 tests carried out in the past 24 hours, bringing the country's total number of coronavirus cases to 214,001.

Meanwhile, the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19 increased to 195,671 with 1,156 patients declared free of the coronavirus over the past day.

Warning citizens to not to grow lax in following precautions, the minister said Istanbul continued to be among the cities with most infections.

"Compared to our case numbers last week, we are determined to go below 1,000 daily new infections. Every day is a new test against COVID-19," the minister wrote.

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 570,000 lives in 188 countries and regions since it originated in China last December.

More than 13 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.