City hospital leads pandemic efforts in Turkey’s capital

Some 4,000 Turkish doctors and 11,000 medical personnel in Ankara's "pandemic towers" have been working non-stop to treat COVID-19 patients in the capital.

Dubbed the "Two Towers," the pandemic towers consist of intensive care units (ICU) and services for COVID-19 patients at Ankara City Hospital. The majority of the patients who were being treated in these special units have recovered.

After the coronavirus outbreak emerged in Turkey, with the first case being confirmed on March 11, pandemic towers were established at Ankara City Hospital.

Many of the medical personnel underwent training for the novel coronavirus and began to perform their duties in intensive care units and pandemic services where COVID-19 patients started getting treatment.

There are places allocated in the ground floor of the special units for medical personnel to take showers, clean their hospital outfits in the laundry rooms, dry them and get ready for the next day's fight against the pandemic.

Prof. Seval İzdeş, who is in charge of the hospital's ICUs, told daily Hürriyet that in the first days they were sleep deprived. But, she said, everything is "back on track" now.

"Of course, our families were scared, but this left its place to relieve now. We are working really cautiously and do not do anything we did before," she said.

"Before we had tea or coffee in the intensive care's corridors but now, let alone drinking tea, we don't even take off our masks or bonnets," she added.

Meanwhile, Prof. Sema Kultufan Turan, a member of the Health Ministry's Coronavirus Science Board, said that a week after the first case emerged in Istanbul, people with coronavirus symptoms started to apply to the Ankara City Hospital.

Turan said that the...