Ankara, May 8 (IANS): Turkey on Friday confirmed 20,107 new Covid-19 cases, including 2,210 symptomatic patients, raising the total number of cases in the country to 4,998,089, according to its health ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 278 to 42,465, while the total recoveries climbed to 4,662,328 after 35,529 more people recovered in the last 24 hours, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The rate of pneumonia in Covid-19 patients stands at 3.2 per cent and the number of seriously ill patients is 3,260 in the country, said the ministry.

A total of 251,194 tests were conducted over the past day, with the overall number of tests in Turkey reaching 48,963,800.

Turkey started mass Covid-19 vaccination on January 14 after the authorities approved the emergency use of the CoronaVac vaccine. More than 14,510,000 people have been vaccinated so far.

Turkey reported its first Covid-19 case on March 11, 2020.