Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced an end to the requirement for wearing protective masks at indoor venues, local reports have said.
This effectively ended the country’s most enduring ban related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, he said, mask use would still be in place in mass transit and hospitals.
He added that this mandate would continue “until the number of daily cases drops below 1,000.”
His statement followed a meeting of the Health Ministry’s Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board.
The move follows similar actions by European countries, which lifted the mask mandate partially or entirely.
Erdogan pointed out that those countries did so as the pandemic was “no longer a global threat.”
