The number of foreign visitors arriving in Turkey climbed to 3.982 million in August, data showed on Friday, surging more than 119 percent from a year earlier when strict COVID-19 measures were still in place but less than two thirds of the number in 2019.

Turkey began closing borders and restricting activity when its first COVID-19 case was recorded in March last year. There were only 1.8 million foreign arrivals in August 2020, compared to 6.3 million in the same month in 2019.

In the first eight months as a whole, foreign arrivals rose 93.94 percent from last year but were less than half of the number in the same period in 2019.