Turkey has moved into 8th place worldwide in terms of highest number of COVID-19 cases since Turkey’s Health Ministry began last month reporting the number of all people who tested positive for the coronavirus instead of just hospitalizations, with 1,748,567 infections as of Dec. 10, according to Worldometers, a reference website that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics.
The US is at the top of the list with 15,877,271 cases, followed by India, Brazil, Russia, France, the UK, Italy and then Turkey.
The number of coronavirus infections climbed to yet another record on Thursday as the health ministry reported 30,424 new cases and 220 deaths over the last 24 hours. The country’s coronavirus death toll has reached 15,751 since March.
In the meantime, Turkey’s healthcare system continues to be challenged by the skyrocketing number of coronavirus cases, with news coming from every part of the country about lack of sufficient hospital beds and intensive care unit space for COVID-19 patients.
Rector of northern Turkey’s Kocaeli University Professor Sadettin Hülagü told Turkish media outlets that the university’s hospital can no longer accept coronavirus patients who are severely ill because there are no empty beds in the hospital’s intensive care unit.