Turkey Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Thursday that the nation will receive its first shipment of China's Sinovac covid-19 vaccine within days as preliminary domestic tests showed it was 91 per cent effective. Ankara, the capital city of Turkey will also sign an agreement with Pfizer/BioNTech for 4.5 million doses, with the option to buy 30 million more from the US pharmaceutical giant and its German partner, Koca said.
As Turkey is set to being with vaccination next month, it will initially get 3 million doses of Sinovac and have the option for 50 million more. The country will first vaccinate healthcare workers and the most vulnerable.
Koca said the first shipments of the Chinese vaccine will be sent to Turkey on Sunday.
Although phase III tests were incomplete, the preliminary tests done on 7,371 volunteers in Turkey displayed that the Chinese vaccine was 91.25 per cent effective.
Turkey "will be able to vaccinate 1.5 million or even two million people per day," Koca said, figuring during the first stage of vaccinations against the virus would cover nine million people.
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Turkey, a nation with 83 million population has officially reported 19,115 Coronavirus deaths and 2.2 million virus infections.