Mehmet Ceyhan

At least 200 to 300 patients are admitted to intensive care units in Istanbul daily as cold weather exacerbates viral infections, leading to a serious shortage of beds, experts warn, calling for enhanced health care resources and vaccination efforts to combat the surge.

The rate of positive cases detected in COVID-19 tests has risen from 3 to 30 percent in Türkiye, with a significant majority anticipated to be associated with EG.5, a new subvariant unofficially nickname as Eris, a prominent infectious disease expert has revealed.

The recent rate of spread of COVID-19 may lead to the emergence of new and vaccine-escapable variants, experts warn.

The number of COVID-19 cases have started to increase in Europe and Türkiye after China, India, South Korea and Japan in the last 10 days.

As Turkey's daily COVID-19 cases have been rising steadily in the past few weeks and lingering around 25,000 over the last couple of days, Turkish authorities continue to call on citizens to comply with pandemic measures.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca once again called on the people to comply "with the conditions of the fight" against the pandemic.

The Turkish Health Ministry's Science Board will look into whether the COVID-19 vaccine could be administered to children aged between 5 and 11 after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Advisory Committee recommended the Pfizer/BioNTech jab for this age group.

The number of daily booster shots given in Turkey is still too low, while the pace of inoculations for the first dose has also lost steam, an expert has warned.

Turkish officials are weighing road maps in a bid to gradually reopen Turkey if the number of virus cases drops to targeted levels after the 17-day full nationwide lockdown that will end on May 17.

Authorities are keeping a close eye on the impact of the lockdown that began on April 29 to decide what steps should be taken next.

Vaccine hesitancy is currently running high in Turkey and creating serious risks at a time when the virus cases continue to hover at record levels in the country, experts have warned.

Some 25 percent of the people who are entitled to receive COVID-19 jabs are avoiding the inoculation and most of those are women, according to experts.

Scientists in Turkey have attested to the reliability and effectiveness of novel coronavirus vaccines being brought to the country, some of which have started to be administered in other nations as well.

Turkey may need to introduce intercity travel restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19, experts have said.

The government last week imposed a raft of curbs, including weeknight curfews and full lockdowns on weekends.