Turkey: Over 3.5M people vaccinated against COVID-19

By Burak Bir

ANKARA (AA) - The number of people in Turkey who were vaccinated against the coronavirus crossed the 3.5 million mark, the country's health minister said on Friday.

Vaccination for people over 65 years started as of Friday, Fahrettin Koca added on Twitter.

Turkey began its mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Jan. 14, starting with healthcare workers along with top officials to encourage public confidence in the vaccines.

Since last December, Turkey has also been implementing curfew on weeknights and a full weekend curfew to curb the spread of the virus.

As of Thursday, Turkey registered a total of 27,187 deaths from COVID-19, while over 2.45 million people have recovered from the disease. There have been over 2.5 million confirmed cases in the country.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed more than 2.37 million lives in 192 countries and regions.

Over 107.8 million cases have been reported worldwide, with recoveries now over 60.39 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.