Turkey to impose new lock down to combat coronavirus

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Tuesday said the government will impose tighter measures to fight with the coronavirus and impose partial lockdowns on weekends across the country.

Speaking after the cabinet meeting, Erdoğan also said all schools will remain closed until the year-end and all restaurants will only work by delivery.

All the museums, sports facilities, pools and cultural centers operating under the municipality would close their doors from Wednesday Nov. 19, the Istanbul municipality announced in a written statement.

Unfortunately, the outbreak tended to spread rapidly in our country, and even exceeded its effect in the March-April period, the statement said, noting the dimension of the restrictions might expand even further in the upcoming period.

Istanbul's mayor Ekrem Imamoglu earlier called for a complete lockdown for at least two weeks in the city of 16.5 million population to curb the surge of COVID-19 cases.

Imamoglu said Istanbul accounts for 50 percent of the total cases in Turkey, and the situation might get worse when the weather will get colder.