ANKARA, March 1 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday unveiled a new normalization plan to ease COVID-19 restrictions in Turkey through a province-based approach.

"It is not possible to take normalization steps in an environment where the pandemic is spreading. As Turkey is a big country in terms of geographical area and population, we need to take gradual steps," Erdogan said at a press conference after a cabinet meeting.

The 81 provinces in Turkey will be divided into four categories of low, medium, high and very high risk according to their COVID-19 situation based on infection rates and the vaccination process. The provinces will be evaluated every week and their normalization applications will be updated, according to Erdogan.

Cafes and restaurants, which were allowed only for take-away and delivery, will now be able to host customers between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. with half capacity, yet excluding very high-risk provinces.

The civil servants will return to normal working hours across Turkey, the president noted.

The weekday curfew will continue across the country between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m., while the weekend curfew restrictions in low and medium-risk provinces will be lifted, and lockdown will remain in high and very high-risk regions on Sunday.

Mobility restrictions for people over 65 and under 20 are abolished in low and medium-risk provinces.

All pre-school education institutions, primary schools, 8th to 12th grades will open for in-person education across Turkey. Besides, face-to-face education will also start in secondary and high schools in low and medium-risk provinces. But only face-to-face exams will be held in high schools in high and very high-risk provinces.

In a map of Turkey tweeted by Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca where the provinces are classified according to four risk groups, the country's biggest metropolis Istanbul is classified as a high-risk city, while the capital Ankara falls into the medium-risk group. Most of the Black Sea provinces are classified as high-risk, while provinces in southeastern Turkey are marked as low risk.

The Turkish government launched its first normalization process in June last year, but a rapid rise in the number of coronavirus cases after summer forced the authorities to reintroduce most of the measures in November.

The new normalization move comes as Turkey has vaccinated nearly nine percent of its total population so far.

Turkey on Monday reported 9,891 new COVID-19 cases, including 645 symptomatic ones, raising the total number in the country to 2,711,479, according to the health ministry.

The death toll from the virus in Turkey rose by 69 to 28,638, while the total recoveries climbed to 2,578,181 after 5,947 more cases recovered in the last 24 hours.

The rate of pneumonia in COVID-19 patients stands at 3.6 percent and the number of seriously ill patients is 1,215 in the country, said the ministry.

A total of 130,536 tests were conducted over the past day, bringing the overall number of tests in Turkey to 33,305,552.

The country started mass vaccination for COVID-19 on Jan. 14 after the authorities approved the emergency use of the Chinese CoronaVac vaccine. About 7,046,000 people have been vaccinated so far.

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