Turkey’s Covid Wordplay Masks Extent of Outbreak, Lawmaker Says
- Reporting ‘patients’ instead of ‘cases’ is acceptable: Turkey
- Lawmaker says reporting shift results in deflated numbers
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A lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition party said the official count of coronavirus cases in the country doesn’t reflect the extent of the outbreak, citing a page of data collected from test centers nationwide.
The document, which was passed to Murat Emir of the Republican People’s Party and has been seen by Bloomberg, details new infections for Sept. 10. According to the data, there were 29,377 Covid-19 cases recorded that day, far more than the Health Ministry’s “daily patient” count of 1,512. About 158,000 tests were carried out, the document shows.