Daily Times

Two medics in protective suits jumped out of a car in a deserted street in central Ankara and hurried inside a building – one carrying medical equipment and the other, paperwork. Some 15 minutes later, they sped off to their next appointment, one of nearly 6,000 teams deployed across Turkey to try to stem the coronavirus pandemic by tracking down the contacts of those found to have become infected.

After recording some of the fastest growth in COVID-19 infections in the world, health officials say the outbreak in Turkey has hit a plateau around six weeks after the first case was confirmed. The death toll of 3,336 is lower than 12 other countries.

The daily death toll has been on a downward trajectory for more than 10 days, with 78 deaths confirmed in the past 24 hours, according to health ministry data on Saturday. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca credits the country’s contact tracing efforts along with Turks’ largely voluntary adherence to lockdown measures, for the trend.

In contrast to South Korea, which limited deaths to below 250 with the help of a contact-tracing app, Turkey has taken a more labour-intensive approach.

Koca said on Wednesday around 5,800 teams of two or three medics had identified 468,390 people who have been in contact with coronavirus patients. He said around 99% of those had been reached and were regularly monitored by health officials.

In the capital Ankara, a coordination centre oversees the field visits and follow-up calls by telephone. The two groups cooperate to identify, test and report cases across the city. “Since a household is on average four to five people, with the workplace added in, there have been cases where we tracked 200 people at once,” said Ayse Cigdem Simsek, the Ankara Provincial Health Directorate Deputy Chairwoman of Public Health Services.