More than 675,000 health workers in Turkey have received the Covid-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac during the first three days of the country’s inoculation program, the Health Ministry said.
The country started mass vaccination for Covid-19 on January 14 after the authorities approved the emergency use of the Chinese vaccine, reports Xinhua news agency.
The vaccination program will move on to adults living in nursing homes, people aged 65 and above, and those working in specific sectors after covering over one million healthcare workers.
Turkey received the first shipment of three million doses of vaccines from China at the end of December, as part of a bigger deal, and expects to get more in the upcoming period.
On Saturday, the country reported 7,550 new Covid-19 cases, including 902 symptomatic patients, as the total number of confirmed cases in the country reached 2,380,665, the Ministry announced.
The death toll from the virus rose by 168 to 23,832, while the total recoveries climbed to 2,254,052 after 8,005 more cases recovered in the last 24 hours.
The rate of pneumonia in Covid-19 patients stands at 4.5 per cent and the number of seriously ill patients is 2,265 in the country, said the Ministry.
A total of 156,792 tests were conducted over the past day, with the overall number of tests in Turkey reaching 27,223,445.