Turkey sent last week half a million coronavirus test kits to the US, however, Turkish doctors are now warnings that the country has reached a crossroads in containing the fast-growing outbreak. Since reporting its first injection two weeks ago, cases in Turkey reached 3,629 outstripping rates in most other countries and the government has fallen short of its target to conduct 10,000 tests per day. “Our test numbers are low. We were certainly not prepared. Countries that are ready must have high test numbers,” Sinan Adiyaman, chairman of the Turkish Medics Association. “Exporting testing kits to the United States as Turkey needs them and while they need to be used here will be an unforgivable mistake,” he noted. He said Turkey was slow on some steps, including suspending sports leagues and quarantining those coming from abroad, especially the thousands returning this month from an Umrah pilgrimage. “Around 200,000 people arrived from abroad since the outbreak began, and they were just given a simple fever test and released across Turkey in an uncontrolled manner,” he said. “You cannot fight a pandemic this way.” Speaking to Reuters, some experts said it was risky for Ankara to export 500,000 kits to the United States only to turn around and order a million more from China. The coronavirus has so far killed 75 people in Turkey, an international crossroads with one of the world’s biggest airports in Istanbul. About 40,000 tests have been done including about 7,000 in the last 24 hours, suggesting Turkey is edging toward the target Health Minister Fahrettin Koca set out a week ago, but only two-thirds of the way there. South Korea, seen as the global leader, does more tests each day than Turkey’s total. Taking measures to fight the virus, Ankara has closed schools, cafes and bars, banned mass prayers, and suspended sports matches and flights. Mustafa Cankurtaran, head of geriatrics at the Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, said his team is following the national guidelines, testing only “risky” patients with cough and fever. But next month will be critical since the outbreak will widen, he warned. Earlier this week Koca said the kits sent to the United States were locally produced PCR tests for the coronavirus, adding that Turkey had a monthly production capacity of 2 million tests, and that the tests purchased from China were “rapid tests”, not PCR.