Turkey says close to 170,000 people recovered from COVID-19

Active novel coronavirus cases of Turkey continued to fall on Saturday, with 612 more recoveries than new infections in a day, said the country's health minister.

A total of 1,984 people beat COVID-19 over the past day, bringing the overall count to 169,182, Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter, citing the Health Ministry data.

"The number of recoveries is 612 more than the number of infected people. This number was 96 yesterday," Koca noted.

The country's death toll from the virus rose to 5,082, as it reported 17 new fatalities in the past 24 hours.

Some 984 patients remain in intensive care, added Koca.

Health care professionals conducted 45,213 tests for the disease in the past day, raising the total count to over 3.23 million.

According to the test results, the total number of infections nationwide reached 195,883 with 1,372 new infections.

The minister also said that "5.68% of the diagnosed in the last 14 days are under the age of 17", while "63% are in the 25-45 age group".

Turkey recorded 24 less infections compared to yesterday, said Koca, adding: "If this drop continues, even at this speed, we can go below 1,000 [new daily infections] in two weeks," he added.

Since first appearing in China last December, the novel coronavirus has spread to at least 188 countries and regions. The US, Brazil, and Russia are currently the countries hardest hit in the world.

The pandemic has killed over 495,500 people worldwide, with infections surpassing 9.86 million and more than 4.98 million recoveries, according to figures compiled by the US' Johns Hopkins University.