Turkey's daily COVID-19 death toll at 17

Turkey's COVID-19 death toll reached 5,082 with 17 new deaths Saturday, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca confirmed.

The number of cases, meanwhile, increased by 1,372 to 195,883, with 45,213 tests carried out Thursday, the minister said on his Twitter account.

According to Koca, 1,984 patients recovered in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recovered patients to 169,182.

"Our confirmed cases today are 24 less than yesterday. If the decrease continues like this, even at this speed, we can go below 1,000 in 2 weeks," the minister said, sharing further information about the spread according to age group. Over the last two weeks, 5,68% of all infected were under the age of 17, wheres 63% were between the ages 25 and 45.

Turkey has so far carried out a total of 3,231,835 tests.

Since first appearing in China last December, the novel coronavirus has spread to at least 188 countries and regions.

The U.S., Brazil, Russia and several European countries are currently the hardest hit in the world.