New figures show COVID-19 rise in Turkish capital Ankara, Izmir

Weekly figures announced by the Health Ministry, which offers an insight into clusters of the coronavirus, indicate that the capital Ankara and Izmir, Turkey’s third-largest city, is now seeing a rise in cases. The country’s most crowded city Istanbul, on the other hand, reported a decline.

Figures released on Monday cover the week of Jan. 15 to Jan. 21. Though the numbers have changed, the difference is slight. In Istanbul, for instance, the number of cases per 100,000 people dropped to around 1,245 from 1,571, while it rose to about 725 to an average of 629 per 100,000 people in the capital. In Izmir, they rose to 729 from 714. Istanbul continues to have the highest number of cases.

Still, the public concerns are high in the country, which repeatedly broke daily records in the number of cases, something associated with the fast-spreading omicron variant. Last week, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca had assured the public that the rise should not be worrying for the population, noting that although the numbers are high, the disease is not as severe as it was in the case of previous strains of COVID-19.

According to weekly figures, Turkey’s eastern provinces, which long dominated the list of places with the least number of cases, once again had the lowest numbers. Van, Şanlıurfa and Adıyaman had the lowest number of cases per 100,000 people, at 29, 48 and 58, respectively. Erzurum, another eastern province, topped the list of places with the sharpest rise in cases, ahead of Bursa in the northwest and the provinces of Çankırı, Yalova and Erzincan.

Istanbul had the highest number of cases, ahead of its eastern neighbor Kocaeli, where the number was around 930 per 100,000. As a matter of fact, most provinces with a high number of weekly cases are neighboring or near Istanbul, a crossing point between Asia and Europe. Kırklareli and Edirne, located west of the megacity, and Yalova to the south, are among them.

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