Some 85% of new virus cases due to UK variant: Health minister

Some 85 percent of new COVID-19 cases across Turkey are due to the U.K. variant, the country's health minister said on April 12, urging people to adhere to coronavirus measures to stem the spread of the virus.

Out of Turkey's 81 provinces, "the South African variant of the virus has been detected in 285 people in 11 provinces, while the Brazilian strain has infected 166 people in nine provinces," Fahrettin Koca told a news conference following the Coronavirus Science Board Meeting.

"A few California-New York and B.1.525 variants have also been detected," he added.

A variant is a name given to a virus that has changed its original formation.

Comparing the COVID-19 variant with the SARS virus that caused a pandemic in 2003, the minister said, "Sometimes in case of a change, the virus turns ineffective. When the SARS virus had variants, it turned ineffective, and the pandemic was over. Now the opposite happens."

The new variants of coronavirus are making the fight against the pandemic even more strenuous, Koca stressed.

According to the COVID-19 risk map, some 80 percent of the country's population lives in the very-high-risk provinces, the minister said.

"There is no dramatic increase in the bed occupancy rate of 59 percent or the intensive care occupancy rate of 67.4 percent, but the developments are serious, and the data is cautionary," he added.

Noting that Turkey, like many other countries, is facing a "new peak" in which the contagion is growing, Koca urged the public to reduce close contact and mobility.

"If our burden becomes unavoidably heavy, we may have to make [restrictive] arrangements as we have seen before," Koca said.

Stressing that the...