Turkey reports more than 1,800 new COVID-19 patients

Turkey registered 1,812 new coronavirus patients over the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry data on Friday.

With 1,419 additions in the past 24 hours, 301,098 of nearly 344,000 registered COVID-19 patients have so far recovered, the ministry reported.

The ministry also said a total of 73 new patients succumbed to the disease and the country's death toll rose to 9,153.

Turkish healthcare professionals conducted over 117,000 more coronavirus tests, and the country has so far held over 12.19 million tests.

The figures also showed that the number of patients in critical condition currently stands at 1,445, with 5.9% this week suffering from pneumonia.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter that the tally of patients in critical condition was moving upwards after a long while, and called on the Turkish nation to stick to coronavirus measures across all regions in the country.

Speaking in a news conference in eastern Erzurum province, the minister said the outbreak lost momentum compared to the past month; but he warned that the rise of cases in some provinces, including Istanbul, Bursa, Kocaeli, Kahramanmaras, and Denizli posed risk to the entire country, thus making it essential to successfully fight the virus also in these locations.

Across the world, COVID-19 has claimed more than 1.1 million lives in 189 countries and regions since last December.

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

Over 39.06 million cases have been reported worldwide, with recoveries exceeding 26.95 million, according to figures compiled by the US' Johns Hopkins University.