Recent alarming figures exist fears that Turkey could become a hot spot of coronavirus pandemic

As it says Al Jazeera, wiretaps, the rapid increase in cases of 18.135 confirmed infections and 356 deaths from the last hours Thursday have caused Turkey to overcome other G20 states like South Korea and Canada that reported cases of the virus weeks ago.

This has also prompted Turks to ask whether the country could follow Italy's path, which has recorded more than 110,000 cases.

Turkey has the highest rate of acceleration for”, said Caghan Kizil, associate professor of neuroscience and genetics at the Helmholtz Association at the German Research Centre.

This was because social movement was not prevented. If we look at China, they were successful because they identified asimptomatic patients who were not showing signs of infection. After closing in Wuhan, the number of cases caused by uncontaminated people declined significantly”.

While Esin Senol, a professor of infectious diseases at Gazi University in Ankara, stressed that Turkey has now seen the number of ten cases in the world and is one of the most dangerous countries.

The “seems to have spread long before the first case was reported because of trips to Europe, Iran and Umrah”, she said, referring to the Muslim pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

Limitation of testing for those recently abroad in the first days of the explosion in Turkey also allowed the virus to spread, Senol added.

Meanwhile, according to AlJazeera, on Thursday evening, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced 79 new deaths.

Although the figure is much lower than the first numbers in the worst days in countries such as Italy and Spain, where the number of daily dead has often exceeded 800 times recently, it was the sharpest growth ever in Turkey.

At a press conference Wednesday, Koca first discovered the nature of the widespread explosion across Turkey, showing that 60 per cent of the cases were reported in Istanbul, the country's shopping centre, which constitutes a fifth of Turkey's population.

And Mehmet Ceyhan, chairman of Turkey's Infectious Diseases Association, warned that the country could see its number of infections exceed others.

If we go to the current rate, the number of our cases will be 300,000 within 10 days”, he was quoted as saying.

However, closing public spaces, limiting travel between cities, and staying people at home would avoid such a dramatic scenario.