04 Feb

Turkey sees a significant increase in the number of cases reported with the new strain of the COVID-19, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Wednesday.

"It seems that it will continue to increase. We see that the mutant virus is transmitted more easily, and the symptoms appear earlier," he told reporters, but no figures of the new variant cases.

The minister announced last week that 128 Turkish citizens were infected with the variant of the novel coronavirus across 17 cities of the country.

Turkey on Wednesday confirmed 8,102 new COVID-19 cases, including 632 symptomatic patients, as the total number of positive cases in the country reached 2,501,079, according to its health ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 117 to 26,354, while the total recoveries climbed to 2,387,384 after 8,314 more cases recovered in the last 24 hours.

A total of 148,192 tests were conducted over the past day, with the overall number of tests in Turkey reaching 30,061,437.

The country started mass vaccination of health workers against COVID-19 on Jan. 

14 after the authorities approved the emergency use of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine. More than 2,400,000 people have been vaccinated so far.

Turkey reported its first COVID-19 case on March 11, 2020.

xinhua