Turkish armoured vehicle maker BMC has ceased operations at its plant in Izmir on Turkey’s Aegean coast after an outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19) among workers, local daily Evrensel reported on August 25.

Around 3,000 workers are employed at the plant while the number of COVID-19 infections among the workforce had climbed to 70 from 12 a week ago, workers at the plant told the daily.

Recently, health specialists in Turkey have warned that Turkey is losing control of its coronavirus outbreak.

Earlier this month, Vestel, one of Europe’s largest producers of home appliances and consumer electronics goods, dismissed reports in Turkish media suggesting that seven of its workers had died from COVID-19 and that around 1,000 had contracted the virus at its plant in Turkey’s western Manisa province, neighbouring Izmir province.

On July 27, Dardanel, a canned fish manufacturer located in Turkey’s northwestern Canakkale province on the Dardanelles strait, said that it would maintain production by keeping all workers under a COVID-19 quarantine on its premises for 14 days.

New cases highest since June

Turkey’s official number of new coronavirus cases per 24-hour cycle—much doubted by independent observers—on August 25 rose to its highest level since mid-June at 1,502. The government responded by banning some celebration events in 14 provinces.

The health minister, Fahrettin Koca, said on Twitter that 24 more people had died from COVID-19, bringing Turkey’s toll to 6,163. More than 261,000 people have contracted the disease in Turkey, according to the official tally.

New cases per day were last this high on June 15 when the country logged 1,592 cases, two weeks after it lifted a partial lockdown.

Turkey’s largest medical association and unaffiliated experts on August 20 reiterated its standpoint that the country’s actual number of COVID-19 cases is much higher than reported figures, Public Radio International’s The World reported.

“There have been more than 1,000 daily diagnoses in [the city of] Ankara, alone,” Osman Elbek, a member of the Turkish Medical Association’s (TBB’s) medical body, told the programme. “We say these contradicting numbers must be explained. But no explanation has been given to us.”

Elbek also claimed that while only 1-2% of patients with the coronavirus in most countries end up in an intensive care unit (ICU), around 10% of Turkish COVID-19 patients need intensive care. He said that this means either the virus in Turkey has mutated to become more deadly, or milder cases are going unconfirmed. 

Turkey has decided to report only cases of COVID-19 that are confirmed with a PCR test, which goes against World Health Organization guidelines. Turkish public health officials have raised questions over the reliability of test results, where patients who present clinical symptoms of COVID-19 may not test positive.

One Turkish ICU doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The World that even patients who test positive for COVID-19 and receive treatment may not make it into the official tally.

“If a patient dies of COVID-19, but their last test result is negative, we don’t write it in the report. Because we know it’s not going to be approved by public health officials, and they won’t be able to be buried,” the doctor said. “We’ve started to self-censor ourselves.”

Germany-based neuroscientist Caghan Kizil, who is not affiliated with the TBB, told the programme that the consistency of Turkey’s daily case counts is a red flag, as numbers should be fluctuating.

“Every day is different in a pandemic,” he said. “Monday is a workday, on Sunday people are home. The Hagia Sophia was converted to a mosque, people went there, and even after that, nothing changed.”

Kızıl concluded that either Turkey’s capacity to test and identify for COVID-19 is too limited to accurately measure the scale of the outbreak, or the numbers are fabricated. “If [the government is] hiding it, it means they know the actual numbers, and maybe they’re taking precautions,” he said. “But if the second case is true, that we can’t find these cases, it means it’s out of control.”