U.S. Centre for Disease Control warns against travel to Turkey

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has placed Turkey on a Level 4 alert over COVID-19, meaning that travellers should avoid all travel to the country.

“Because of the current situation in Turkey even fully vaccinated travellers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants and should avoid all travel to Turkey,” the CDC said in a statement on Saturday.

“If you must travel to Turkey, get fully vaccinated before travel. All travelers should wear a mask, stay at a distance of 6 feet from others, avoid crowds, and wash their hands,” the statement noted.

The warning from the nation’s health protection agency arrives as Turkey has announced that the more contagious variant first detected in Britain accounts for 75 percent of all recent cases in the country.

Turkey’s daily count of coronavirus cases reached over 55,500 on Friday, according to health ministry data.

A total of 55,791 cases, including 2,408 symptomatic patients, were confirmed across the country, the data showed.

Turkey’s overall case tally is over 3.74 million, while the nationwide death toll has reached 33,454, with 253 fatalities over the past day.

As many as 35,786 more patients in the country won the battle against the virus, bringing the total number of recoveries to over 3.26 million.

More than 40.9 million coronavirus tests have been done in Turkey to date, with 305,103 tests since Thursday.

The latest figures also show that the number of COVID-19 patients in critical condition has risen to 2,408.