ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday announced he and his wife had tested positive for the Omicron variant of COVID-19, but were not experiencing severe symptoms.
“After experiencing light symptoms, my wife and I tested positive for COVID-19. We have a mild infection thankfully, which we learned to be the Omicron variant,” the Turkish president said in a tweet.
“We remain on duty. We will continue our work from home. We hope for your prayers,” Erdogan added. Meanwhile, his wife Emine Erdogan wrote on Twitter: “God willing we will shake this infection off together with Mr Tayyip.”
Officials of his AKP ruling party, ministers and opposition leaders wished him a speedy recovery.
Erdogan had traveled to Ukraine on Thursday for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the ongoing tensions with Russia in the area, before returning home to Turkey. The Turkish President said he was willing to serve as a mediator and host a summit between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Turkish president received his third vaccine dose in June last year. Turkey has recorded around 12 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 90,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Turkey requires people to isolate for seven days if they test positive. However if they test negative on the fifth day, they can leave quarantine. The country’s daily number of cases has risen to over 100,000 in recent weeks, which officials have attributed to the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Masks are widely used in Turkey but there are no restrictions with schools and universities still open, and life continuing as normal without curfews. The latest official figures on Saturday showed 52.5 million have had their second vaccine dose in Turkey, which has a population of around 85 million.
