İYİ Party leader Akşener tests positive for COVID-19

ANKARA

Meral Akşener, the leader of the opposition İYİ (Good) Party, has become yet another senior politician who has tested positive for COVID-19.

“The PCR test, which I had, came out positive. My husband and I will in quarantine for one week. We are feeling very well,” Akşener wrote on Twitter.

Temel Karamollaoğlu, Saadet (Felicity) Party chair, announced earlier this month that he had the coronavirus. The 80-year-old politician received treatment for COVID-19 at a hospital in Ankara. He was discharged last week.

Karamollaoğlu and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), called Akşener to wish her a speedy recovery.

The CHP and İYİ Party, along with Saadet Party and the Democrat Party, make up the Nation Alliance.

Meanwhile, the daily number of COVID-19 cases continue to hover around 78,000, prompting Health Minister Fahrettin Koca to renew calls for the public to get their booster shots.

“Hospitalization rates among people with chronic illnesses and the elderly are much higher than the young and healthy. It is a must that we follow the anti-virus measures and get the booster shot,” the minister wrote on Twitter.

Around 25 million people in Turkey have been given a third dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Earlier this month, the country started to give the locally developed inactivated vaccine, Turkovac, to those who have received two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine, as a booster shot.

According to data from the Health Ministry, over 52 million people have been double jabbed and more than 57 million have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Since the inoculation drive was launched in January last year, well over 141 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in Turkey.