di OZGE YILIDIRIM – Following the meeting of the Scientific Committee yesterday, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca gave information about new data and measures in the fight against the epidemic. Minister Koca made promising explanations regarding the ‘peak’ point (where the number of cases is highest) and ‘plateau’, in other words, drawing a horizontal course, where both treatment and case numbers are expected to decrease.

“I want you to hold the precautions much harder than before, while you are on the path of ready combat. Do not take the virus from the street and carry it to your home. Stay at home, social distance, obey the rule of isolation. Those who do not go out on the streets are the heroes of this struggle. The first aim in epidemics is to prevent the spread of the disease”.

“Fillation studies is a practice we have been carrying out meticulously since the first case. To date, the film has been 322 thousand 734 people. A team of 1200 vehicles in Istanbul is in operation for fillation. In Turkey, a total of 4 thousand 500-odd people in the field vehicle. We do this very seriously. Our contact or symptomatic citizen must come to our health institutions by wearing a mask for early treatment, and must be in an effort to get this treatment early …”.

“We have created our own treatment algorithm and created medication early in the cases. We delivered the drug to all our patients for free. When the symptom appeared, we saw the effect of the treatment initiated in patients who were referred to the hospital early. The rate of intensive care was 4 percent in those who started early treatment. Another concrete consequence of starting early treatment is the drop in the rate at which the disease turns into pneumonia”.

“Changing the treatment algorithm in line with the opinions of our Scientific Committee and starting treatment early reduced pneumonia rates. We restricted our citizens over 65 from going out. 35 percent of cases were older than 65 years before the curfew. After the restriction, this rate dropped to 18 percent. Our number of cases continues to increase. But we see that this rate of increase is decreasing”.

“It will not be surprising to create a plateau in the coming days. In the coming days, we see that if there is no fluctuation, we can reach a peak within 10 days of a week. According to the average world samples and the information we have obtained from China, South Korea countries, we think that there will be a plateau after 2 weeks and then it will decrease within 2-3 weeks. All this should not comfort us. Our citizens should not give up their measures to avoid a new wave, we say a little more patience”.

In Turkey, there is a curfew again this weekend on the streets.