Fahrettin Koca

No schools are currently suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Turkey's Education Minister Mahmut Özer has said, as the number of daily cases has been lingering around 95,000 across the country.

Turkey's three most populous cities, Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir, have seen increases in the weekly COVID-19 cases at varying rates.

The incidence rate, measuring the number of coronavirus infections per 100,000 people, rose slightly to around 895 in Istanbul, which is home to nearly 16 million residents, in the week of Jan. 29-Feb. 4 from 890 between Jan. 22 and Jan. 28.

Turkey has unveiled a guideline that regulates telehealth services to be provided by eligible institutions.

The system allows patients to receive remote health services from institutions, which should meet necessary technical criteria to offer such help.

Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum has tested positive for COVID-19, while the country's top health official predicts that daily virus cases will decline sharply after peaking.

Turkey's locally developed vaccine against COVID-19, Turkovac, is now available in all 81 provinces of the country, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said, urging people to get their shots as daily infections remain high.

"Turkovac is ready to be administered at city hospitals, research and training hospitals and other health institutions in all provinces," Koca wrote on Twitter.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has called on the public to avoid complacency and believing that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 causes a milder disease, urging everyone to get their booster shots.

"We are fighting a variant of the virus that spreads rapidly and causes a milder course of the disease. This should not be passed onto you as complacency," Koca said on Twitter.

Turkey will use the anti-COVID drug Molnupiravir in the early-stage treatment of coronavirus patients, the country's health minister has announced as daily infections continue to remain high.

Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said the difficult period in the fight against COVID-19 has been left behind and life will turn to normal soon, but stressed the current personal measures taken in protection against the virus will continue.

Noting that the pandemic was still on the agenda, Koca assured that "this will change in a short time."

Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has reiterated that the Omicron-triggered rise in the virus case is not likely to cause problems that were experienced in the early chapters of the pandemic but warned that people still need to take necessary precautions.

Meral Akşener, the leader of the opposition İYİ (Good) Party, has become yet another senior politician who has tested positive for COVID-19.

"The PCR test, which I had, came out positive. My husband and I will in quarantine for one week. We are feeling very well," Akşener wrote on Twitter.