Turkey administers over 33M COVID-19 vaccine shots to date

By Handan Kazanci

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey administered over 33M doses of COVID-19 vaccines since it launched a mass vaccination campaign in mid-January, Health Ministry announced on Saturday.

More than 19.39 million people have received their first doses, while 13.61 million have been fully vaccinated, according the ministry data.

On Friday, the country administered a total of 578,762 doses of COVID-19 vaccines over the past day, official figures showed.

Turkey reported 6,261 new coronavirus cases, including 561 symptomatic patients, over the last 24 hours on Friday. The number of new cases on Thursday was 6,408.

The country's overall case tally is nearly 5.32 million, while the nationwide death toll has reached 48,593 with 69 new fatalities.

On Friday, Turkey has added cargo workers, couriers and employees of intracity and intercity transportation, as well as workers of taxi and minibus services to COVID-19 vaccine priority groups.

To contain the spread of the virus, Turkey is currently implementing a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. from Monday to Saturday, and a full lockdown on Sundays.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed over 3.78 million lives in 192 countries and regions, with more than 175.2 million cases reported worldwide, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins University.