The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has announced a nationwide “full lockdown” starting on Thursday and lasting until May 17th to curb a surge in coronavirus infections and deaths, saying that these are the strictest measures yet and are necessary to avoid ‘heavy costs’ in near future, health-wise and economically.
Total daily cases in Turkey peaked above 63,000 on April 16th before dropping sharply to below 39,000 on Sunday, and yesterday they logged 37,312 new Covid-19 infections and 353 deaths in the previous 24 hours, the world’s fourth highest number of cases.
Announcing the new measures yesterday (Monday) after a cabinet meeting, Erdogan said all intercity travel would require official approval, all schools would shut and lessons are to move online, and a strict capacity limit would be imposed for users of public transport.
Turks will have to stay indoors except for essential shopping trips and urgent medical treatment. Certain groups including emergency service workers and employees in the food and manufacturing sectors will be exempt.
The new restrictions take effect from 16:00 GMT (7pm local time) on Thursday and will end at 02:00 GMT on May 17th.
“At a time when Europe is entering a phase of reopening, we need to rapidly cut our case numbers to below 5,000 not to be left behind. Otherwise, we will inevitably face heavy costs in every area, from tourism to trade and education,” Erdogan said.
The measures appear to be designed to avoid another spike around the time of traditional family gatherings and celebrations that take place when the holy month of Ramadan ends in mid-May, and these new restrictions come with Turkey falling considerably behind its planned vaccination schedule after a quick start in mid-January.
It has provided two jabs to eight million people and is pushing China to speed up the delivery of Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine after securing a deal for 100 million doses, and they have also received their first deliveries of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and have reached a deal with Russia to start producing Sputnik V locally.
For Brits wanting to holiday in Turkey, this is a stark realisation of the situation abroad. With these sorts of figures there is no way Turkey will be on the UK Governments green list, regardless of what they specify to allow people into the country, ie, no tests or quarantine, or having a ‘quick lockdown’ to try and rectify the situation.
Having said that, there are a group of islands 2,000 miles due south of the UK that are in a much better position for summer holidays... mmmm.
