Turkey: Vaccination for people over age 85 begins

ANKARA

Turkey on Thursday began vaccination against COVID-19 for people over the age of 85 and pharmacy workers.

Citizens over the age of 85 will be vaccinated at their homes following the evaluation of the Scientific Committee meeting that was held on Wednesday.

Additionally, vaccination for pharmacy workers and interns has also started.

Last week, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and members of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board received the vaccine.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also got the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine last week.

So far, over 1.05 million people, including healthcare workers have been vaccinated against the virus across the country since the beginning of the mass campaign on Jan. 14.

The second dose of the vaccine will be administered 28 days apart. Those who recovered from COVID-19 will not be vaccinated in four to six months following their recovery.

The first batch of 3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech arrived in Turkey on Dec. 30.

Since last month, Turkey has been imposing curfews as part of its efforts to curb the virus's spread.

As of Wednesday, Turkey registered a total of 24,487 deaths from COVID-19, while over 2.28 million people have recovered from the disease. There have been over 2.4 million confirmed cases in the country.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed more than 2.07 million lives in 191 countries and regions.

Over 96.95 million cases have been reported worldwide, with recoveries now over 53.50 million, according to figures compiled by the US' Johns Hopkins University.

The US, India, and Brazil remain the worst-hit countries in terms of cases.

*Writing by Burak Bir