Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that Turkey has lost some ground in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported.

He noted that a focus on hygiene, wearing masks and observing social distancing will protect people and contribute to economic recovery in the second half of the year.

"The numbers in recent days show that we have lost our position in the fight against the epidemic," Erdogan said in a TV address. "But we aim to remove the pandemic from our agenda by respecting the cleaning, mask and distance rules."

According to Erdogan, the economic recovery signals have been "quite strong" since May and "we expect great momentum from the second half of the year."