Policy Note/ Fatih Özatay, Güven Sak

Our policy note, “What can we do to manage the economic consequences of COVID-19?” was published in Dünya newspaper on March 23^rd, 2020.

In the last five days, from that publication date up to now (March 28^th, 2020), the number of cases worldwide increased by 75 percent, and the number of deceased people by 86 percent, respectively. The number of cases has surpassed 650,000 and the number of deaths exceeded 30,000. By the time you will be reading this note, the numbers will have increased even more.

It took fifty days for the number of cases to reach 100,000. It took thirteen days to reach a second 100,000. It took four days thereafter to reach a third 100,000. The fourth 100,000 needed only three days. The fifth took three days. The sixth 100,000 reached in two days. COVID-19 is spreading rapidly and the number of casualties is increasing with it.

COVID-19 in Turkey is spreading faster than amongst its peers. The current figures should not mislead anyone. In the last five days, the number of cases in Turkey increased by 384 percent, and the fatalities caused by the virus rose by 191 percent. It is striking that, for the past five days, the spread of the virus in our country is above the world average.

The increasing rate of COVID-19 overtime reveals that voluntary social distancing measures do not work well enough. Social distancing measures are not for eliminating the disease, rather slowing down the spread, and consequently, providing time for prompt test kits and/or the development of a vaccine to ensure that the health infrastructure does not collapse meanwhile.

You may read policy note from here.

This policy note was published in Turkish on 01.04.2020