The governor of Turkey’s most populous city of İstanbul has announced that the city has moved beyond the second wave peak of the coronavirus pandemic and that there has been a 40 percent decline in the number of patients hospitalized due to COVID-19.
“We have left behind the second wave peak of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients fell by 40 percent, while patients in intensive care fell by 25 percent,” İstanbul Governor Ali Yerlikaya tweeted on Tuesday.
İstanbul, Turkey’s financial and cultural hub with a population of 16.5 million, saw an 85 percent increase in daily coronavirus cases at the end of October, according to the health ministry.
In a statement in early November, the İstanbul Chamber of Physicians (İTO) warned that İstanbul had more coronavirus infections than the number of cases reported in China’s Wuhan, where the first coronavirus infection was discovered.
Turkey reported 19,103 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, including 3,412 symptomatic patients, raising the total number of infections since March to 2,043,704, according to the health ministry.