Turkey plans to vaccinate around 50 million for COVID-19 by May
Turkey’s coronavirus vaccination campaign is set to ramp up significantly as Ankara plans to inoculate more than 50 million people against COVID-19 within the next two months, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced Thursday.
Speaking at a press conference after a meeting with the Coronavirus Science Board, Koca said Turkey has so far vaccinated 6.5 million people as he explained the government’s ambitious plan to inoculate more than half of the country’s population by the end of May.
Explaining that 60% of the population needs to be vaccinated for authorities to consider calling the outbreak truly under control, Koca said the deals for the necessary doses were already signed.
“We know we will have around 105 million vaccine doses by April or May at the latest. What is important for us is to complete the vaccination campaign by the end of May,” he said.
According to Koca, an overwhelming majority of the vaccines – 100 million doses – will be sourced from Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac, whose CoronaVac vaccine is already being used in Turkey.
The remaining doses will be BioNTech/Pfizer’s vaccine, Koca said, adding that negotiations were already underway for Russia’s Sputnik V and the Moderna vaccine.
Regarding Turkey’s efforts to develop a domestic shot, Koca said Phase 2 trials of the leading vaccine candidate would be finished by the end of April, and by May the last phase of the trials would begin.
Earlier in February, Turkey announced plans to gradually ease coronavirus restrictions on a provincial basis as authorities began reporting the weekly cases in cities across the country.
According to the Health Ministry, the risk level will be classified as "very high," "high," "medium" and "low" for every province. Public health boards in each province will be able to decide whether to lift restrictions or tighten them based on those levels.
(c) Daily Sabah
News.Az
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