Vaccination helps keep severe virus cases under control in Turkey

The number of coronavirus cases has leaped in Turkey after the country moved to the controlled normalization phase, but this has not yet overwhelmed hospitals' intensive care units thanks to vaccinations against COVID-19.

Infections have increased as much as 300 percent after the government announced normalization measures three weeks ago, however, the occupancy rate at intensive care units (ICU) has risen 25 percent. This was largely due to the vaccination of most of some 8 million people aged over 65.

Only 9 percent of this age group has not yet received their jabs and most of those are women.

Experts reckoned that the sharp increase in the infections, which they describe as the third wave in the outbreak, is related to virus variants. However, they pointed that the fatality rate has been rather low.

People needed to wait up to 72 hours to be admitted to ICUs in November and December last year when the daily cases hovered around 32,000, but presently hospitals are not facing a rush to those units.

They also stressed that in the past months, people aged over 65 accounted for 85 percent of all ICU patients.

In late December 2020, when Turkey had not yet started its vaccination program, the number of patients in critical condition was over 5,000, however, the latest data from the Health Ministry show that there were fewer than 2,000 critically ill patients in hospitals over the past week.

Also, the ICU occupancy rate, which was over 70 percent in late December, dropped to 65 percent as of March 22.

Experts also said that the upward trend in the virus cases is likely to continue into April, but infections may start to decline in the second half of next month as people gather in outdoor places thanks to warmer...