Rate of daily coronavirus cases following downward trend: Minister

ISTANBUL

The pace of the growing daily number of COVID-19 cases is tending to decrease, a Turkish senior officials said as the country’s vaccination drive continues unabated.

“The rate of increase in the number of cases tends to decrease. We are the ones who will make it permanent,” Turkey’s health minister Fahrettin Koca said, calling on people once more to be vaccinated without compromising precaution.

The country also continues its intensive vaccination campaign to curb the spread of coronavirus, as everyone age 16 and above is eligible for vaccine shots.

Health professionals’ efforts helped the country to reach daily vaccination numbers of 1 million at times, but their work is not done, especially in the face of vaccine hesitancy and as people in remote areas are unable to travel to hospitals and other venues for vaccination.

In the eastern province of Bitlis, where vaccination rates are reported to be low compared to the rest of the country, vaccination crews fight smothering weather and challenging terrain to find those who did not have their jabs yet.

They are trying hard to convince those who do not prefer to get vaccinated on the ground that jabs allegedly “causes infertility” and “triggers chronic diseases.”

“There is a misconception among the public, and we are trying to break this,” Bitlis Provincial Health Director Koray Okur said.

“Our teams are calling the citizens one by one, and field teams are trying to convince them by going door to door with mukhtars,” he added.

Local religious leaders, known as mele in the region, also have been trying to persuade people who have grown skeptical towards getting vaccinated.

On the recommendation of a religious leader in the province’s Güroymak district, some young students who received Quran education were vaccinated by mobile teams.

Abdulgani Mutlu, an opinion leader who called everyone to get vaccinated, emphasized the necessity of getting jabbed to get rid of the disease.

“We have seen and experienced that this disease, which has spread all over the world, also exists in our country. We want everyone to be vaccinated,” Mutlu said, stressing that getting vaccinated was also suitable for the religion of Islam.