Speaking at an extraordinary virtual meeting of G20 Digital Economy Ministers, Mustafa Varank highlighted the importance of acting in a collective responsible manner to sustain the global order.<\/p>\n
He also called on member states to deliver a constructive and result-oriented roadmap to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
The ministers gathered online to discuss effective use of digital economy policies to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
Increasing internet connectivity, providing data safety, developing digital R&D projects in healthcare sector, using digital technologies for manufacturing medical supplies and strengthening the resilience of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in global supply chains were among topics addressed during the meeting.<\/p>\n
Highlighting that the world economy will suffer the worst year since the Great Depression, Varank said cooperation at the G20 is imperative to save lives and livelihoods alike.<\/p>\n
“Additionally, we must design an international accountability mechanism for countries which behaved irresponsible or non-transparent in such times,” Varank stressed.<\/p>\n
Touching on Turkey’s efforts to stem the spread of the virus, Varank said Turkey has so far delivered medical supplies to 55 countries.<\/p>\n
“Turkey\u2019s ability to achieve this became possible with the visionary leadership of his excellency President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” Varank added.<\/p>\n
He stressed that the country moved swiftly to tackle the crisis thanks to its sound healthcare system.<\/p>\n
“First, we distinguished some of our hospitals as pandemic hospitals.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Then, rapidly increased the capacity of our intensive care units.”, he explained.<\/p>\n
While many countries face medical equipment shortages, including personal protective equipment, respirators and masks, Turkey took up national emergency initiative for mass production of indigenous ventilators in a two-week period, Varank said.<\/p>\n
“Thanks to this effort, we can today allocate a respiratory device for nearly every intensive care bed in Turkey,” he added.<\/p>\n
He underlined that digital technologies have been effectively used to fight the pandemic in Turkey, such as a pandemic tracking application which displays the exact status of the outbreak and create risk maps across the country.<\/p>\n
“With their consent, individuals can also track their family, get access to social services, and even evaluate themselves for the virus with the help of a few of detailed questions,” Varank noted.<\/p>\n
Turkey’s recently launched COVID-19 Technology Platform to coordinate R&D projects for the discovery of new medicines and vaccines is hosting 16 different projects so far, Varank highlighted.<\/p>\n
“We are employing big data search techniques, for instance, to identify drug candidates among thousands of molecules with the help of AI,” he said.<\/p>\n
Pointing to role of MSMEs on the stability of the global supply chains amid coronavirus, Varank said Turkey supports them to leverage digital technologies in manufacturing and business models.<\/p>\n
As of Thursday, Turkey registered a total of 3,174 deaths due to coronavirus whereas nearly 49,000 people have recovered from the disease. Currently, there are 120,204 confirmed cases in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey\u2019s industry and technology minister on Thursday called on G20 member states to design an international accountability mechanism for countries which “behaved irresponsible or non-transparent” in times of crisis. Speaking at an extraordinary virtual meeting of G20 Digital Economy Ministers, Mustafa Varank highlighted the importance of acting in a collective responsible manner to sustain the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":65650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78530,10214,78478],"class_list":["post-65649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-covid-19","tag-g20","tag-turkey-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}