Reuters, one of the world's leading news agencies, introduced to the world Turkey’s “filiation teams” also called “virus detectives” established to track people in contact with COVID-19 patients in Turkey. A Turkish official said it was sometimes necessary to reach 200 people because of a single Covid-19 case. Reuters, the world-famous news agency, watched Turkish filiation teams working against the corona virus outbreak.
Two-person teams of officers go door-to-door to the homes of suspects who have had contact with people carrying the corona virus and collect information.
In a filiation study conducted in 81 provinces in Turkey, the filiation teams that reach out to people who have had contact with the virus and initiate new diagnostic processes are among the most active members of the fight against Covid-19 in the field.
Health workers who do filiation work in the field are described as the "Hidden Heroes" of the fight as they carry out their duties.
Health Minister Fahrettin KOCA who made a statement on the filiation study said, "We have ensured that the rate of increase of cases falls early with this filiation. Starting with the first case, we have applied this practice with every case we identified”.
Minister KOCA also said: "We have reached out to all the people who positive diagnosed patients had come into contact with, in the last three days and tried to scan them. It is difficult to understand from the outside how much attention and diligence this requires. Slow-down in death rate in Turkey realized in week 5. Turkey became the country to catch the slowdown in the rate of death toll, earliest."
Minister KOCA described the working system of the filiation teams as follows: "Each confirmed case related to 4.5 contacts on average. About 96 per cent of them were followed up. In total, there were more than 251 thousand people who were followed. Filiation teams consist of an average of 3 people; a doctor, a medical officer and an auxiliary staff. Teams take action as soon as the story of the case is taken to detect each new case of corona virus and scan the listed people the patient has been in contact with within 48-49 hours. Teams move on the field with mobile devices, our central units monitor their work on the field”.
A team of 4,600 people in Turkey are making a list of the last contacts of Corona infected patients one by one. These people are found to check out if they have symptoms such as fever, cough. People on the contact list are quarantined and prevented from passing on the virus to others if it is infected.
Earlier, an article on Turkey's fight against the corona virus outbreak was published on the website of the US-based broadcaster CNN. The article pointed out Turkey followed a different path from other countries in many ways and experts said partial limitations could yield results.
