YDP leader test positive

THE leader of the Rebirth Party (YDP), Erhan Arıklı, has tested positive for Covid-19 and is being confined to the Oasis quarantine hotel in Bellapais.

Announcing his test result via social media, Dr Arıklı, who is also a hopeful in October’s presidential elections, said: “I was really upset to see the results of friends coming out positive while I had no symptoms of Covid-19. I felt guilty. I isolated myself for 10 days and had no symptoms.

“Finally, on Sunday, I decided to undergo tests at three separate locations . . . and after a few hours my friend, [Near East University owner] Suat Günsel, called and told me that I had tested positive.

“I was taken to the Oasis quarantine hotel and further tests will be conducted within five days, taking into account my [previous] 10 days of self-isolation.”

Dr Arıklı later added his wife Nurgün had tested negative for the coronavirus.

The pair had been self-isloating after YDP members, including MP Bertan Zaroğlu, had tested positive last week. Mr Zaroğlu, who is also a Turkish citizen, was transferred to Turkey by air ambulance at the weekend due, he claimed, to “bad conditions” he encountered at Lefkoşa State Hospital.

The statement stressed, however, that both Mr Zaraoğlu and Arıklı had only criticised “the attitudes of a few people working at the hospital” and that they recognised and supported the “struggle being waged by the majority of healthcare workers”.