Turkish minister warns against pregnancy deaths from COVID-19

The Turkish health minister on Friday warned against the increasing number of unvaccinated pregnancy deaths from COVID-19, reported Xinhua.

"Pregnancy deaths increased by 52 percent in 2020 compared to the year before the pandemic. This year, we lost 50 percent more mothers-to-be due to COVID-19 compared to last year," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted.

In addition, "99 percent of the pregnant women we lost were unvaccinated," he said, noting the vaccination rate among pregnant women is very low.

Turkey on Friday confirmed 24,409 new COVID-19 cases, raising its total tally of infections to 7,985,944, according to its health ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 209 to 70,207, while 30,846 more recovered in the last 24 hours.

A total of 351,373 tests were conducted over the past day, the ministry said.

Turkey started mass COVID-19 vaccination on Jan. 14 after the authorities approved the emergency use of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.

More than 55.35 million people have received their first doses of vaccines, while more than 48.56 million have taken their second doses. Turkey has so far administered over 116.12 million doses including third booster jabs.