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Ombudsman Institution

rules to be obeyed have been announced day by day in every field. Accordingly,
the number of cases has decreased below one thousand as of 20 May 2020.

5.2. Actions for Treatment Process

When the pandemic broke out, the treatment of the patients who are not
in urgent medical condition has been postponed. In this way, the occupancy
rate at hospitals has been decreased from 70% to 30%. Even when the rate
of cases for coronavirus was highest in Türkiye, there weren’t any challenges
faced in terms of critically important areas such number of beds, intensive care
units, ventilators, medication, and medical supplies. In fact, beginning from
the day when the number of patients needing intensive care for coronavirus
has decreased, Türkiye announced that it can accept patients from abroad if
requested.

The drug which has been reported to have positive impact on the treatment
of the COVID-19 patients in China has been supplied to administer it for the
treatment of the intensive care patients.

For the COVID-19 cases with positive clinical symptoms and for the
cases having acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) with acute bilateral
infiltration detected by tomography, immune (convalescent) plasma treatment
is also administered. The immune plasmas are collected by the Turkish Red
Crescent from the donors recovered from the COVID-19. The collecting and
administrating procedure for immune plasma is implemented according to the
Guide on Supply and Clinical Use of COVID-19 Immune (Convalescent)
Plasma prepared by the Ministry of Health.

Türkiye has been among the countries where the novel coronavirus has
entered at the latest. However, it has been among the countries which have
reached the peak level earliest and started the decrease of the rates. Also, it
has been among the countries in Europe where the case fatality rate has been
lowest. The Ministry of Health supports all units including the Scientific and
Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TUBITAK), the universities etc.
in their efforts to produce a vaccine. In this regard, 24 universities, 8 public
R&D units, 8 private sectors and hundreds of researchers in coordination
with TUBITAK have been conducting their projects under the COVID-19

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