Turkey: Recoveries outpacing new virus cases

Turkey on Thursday continued its positive trend of more people recovering from coronavirus than contracting it.

The country's health minister said there were 1,151 more recoveries from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, bringing the tally to 206,365, while 913 people contracted the virus, bringing the total to date to 223,315.

"There were 238 more recoveries than new cases," Fahrettin Koca pointed out on Twitter.

"The number of people under age 65 among the 1,043 patients we lost due to COVID-19 since June 1 is 136," he added, citing Health Ministry data.

He also said that the cities with the highest number of cases in the last three days are the capital Ankara along with Konya, Şanlıurfa, Batman, Adana, Kayseri, and Erzurum-with İstanbul, Turkey's largest city, absent from the list.

Since July 3 the country has had fewer than 20,000 active cases.

The country's death toll from the disease rose to 5,563, with 18 new fatalities reported over the last 24 hours.

Healthcare professionals did over 43,343 tests for COVID-19 since Wednesday, raising the total count to over 4.4 million.

Since it originated in China last December, the coronavirus pandemic has claimed nearly 625,000 lives in 188 countries and regions.

More than 15 million COVID-19 cases have been reported around the world so far, with recoveries exceeding 8.7 million, according to figures compiled by the US' Johns Hopkins University.

The US, Brazil, Russia, and India are currently the worst-hit countries in the world.