In its daily COVID-19 report, Turkey’s total daily new infection case figure was published yesterday November 25th by the health ministry for the first time as 18,351. This was the third highest national figure in the world and the second highest European figure. It is surprising that the health ministry had waited so long to declare this figure on a daily basis, as is done by the rest of the world. It can only be assumed that the Turkish government wanted to play down the effect of the pandemic in Turkey. Unfortunately, the result has been disastrous for Turkey as the lack of a timely, effective and determined strategy to prevent the spread of the virus was not implemented.