Contact Tracing in Turkey’s Struggle with COVID-19: Its Scope, Components, and Stages
Öz
In COVID19 pandemic started on 31/12/2019, the first reported case and death were observed in Turkey on March 11th and 17th, respectively. As this letter is written, 80.783.674 cases and 1.764.863 deaths around the world, and 2.147.578 cases and 19.878 deaths in Turkey were observed. Non-pharmaceutical interventions such as contact tracing (CT), quarantine/isolation, school closures, curfews were applied in different combinations. The experience gained from the beginning of the pandemic has shown that CT has strategic importance in combating the pandemic. Deaths per population and per case rankings show that Turkey has achieved considerable success in the struggle against the pandemic. More than 6000 CT teams each consisting of 3 staff and reached the cases and their contacts in less than 32 hours with a rate of 99.6% play an important role in this success. In this letter, the scope, components, stages of CT applied in Turkey are provided.
Anahtar Kelimeler
Kaynakça
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