December 3rd – Turkey’s health minister announced a vaccination plan on Wednesday (February) in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The plan will arrange for nationals to be vaccinated against China against the novel coronavirus later this month.
According to the Associated Press, Turkey’s health minister Fahrettin Koca has previously announced an agreement with the Chinese biopharmaceutical company Kochen to buy 50 million doses of coronavirus vaccine to deal with the country’s coronavirus epidemic. In a statement later on the 2nd, Koka said that the first batch of inactivated vaccines will arrive in Turkey after December 11. “If developments are as positive as expected, Turkey will become one of the countries in the world to start vaccination at an early stage,” Koka said.
Koka said that the vaccination will be carried out in four stages. The first phase includes medical staff, citizens over 65 years old and people living in homes for the elderly, disabled or other protective homes. Next up will be essential workers and people over 50 years old who have at least one chronic disease. In the third phase, people, young people and other workers under the age of 50 who have at least one chronic disease will be vaccinated. The last phase will target the rest of the population.
Meanwhile, Koka also said that other models of coronavirus vaccines will be sold in pharmacies. We will deliver at least 10 million doses of vaccines in December, and 20 million doses will likely be delivered. 20 million more doses were injected in January and 10 million more doses in February.” It is understood that Turkey’s population exceeds 83 million.
Koca also previously announced an agreement to deliver 1 million doses of Pfizer vaccine in December. He said on the 2nd that more vaccines are under negotiation. These vaccines introduce so-called messenger RNA (mRNA), which encode disease-specific antigens and promote the body’s immune response. According to the report, Turkey currently has two vaccines in the experimental stage, and the country is also developing a local vaccine. Vaccine trials usually take years, but have been greatly accelerated due to the global pandemic.
It is reported that Turkey has had new deaths for 10 consecutive days. On the evening of the 2nd local time, data updated on the website of the Turkish Ministry of Health showed that Turkey conducted 183,624 COVID-19 tests on that day, of which 31,923 people tested positive, including 6,690 patients with symptoms and 513,66,666 cumulative cases with symptoms.
On that day, 193 new deaths were reported in Turkey, with a total of 14,129 deaths; 4,821 new cured cases were reported, with a total of 414,141 cures. At present, there are still 5,502 severe cases in Turkey.
