ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that Turkey will undergo a full lockdown from April 29 to May 17, as the third wave of the virus intensifies across the country.
Turkey logged 37,312 new COVID-19 infections and 353 deaths in the previous 24 hours on Monday, health ministry data showed, sharply down from mid-April but still the world’s fourth-highest number of cases.
“We must quickly reduce the number of cases to less than 5,000 a day,” Erdogan said in a televised address. He said Turkey would enter “a full closure” that requires people to stay indoors without a valid reason and sees all non-essential businesses closed.
Travel between regions will be restricted and supermarkets will also be closed on Sundays for the first time. The measures appear to be designed to avoid another spike around the time of traditional family gatherings that take place during Ramadan.
The new restrictions come with Turkey falling considerably behind its planned inoculation 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.
Turkey has also received its first deliveries of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and has reached a deal with Russia to start producing Sputnik V locally.
