'Turkey to produce 50M doses of innovative vaccine'

By Emin Avundukluoglu

ANKARA (AA) - If all phases successfully end, Turkey will have 50 million doses of an innovative coronavirus vaccine candidate, the country's industry and technology minister said on Wednesday.

Speaking to the reporters in parliament, Mustafa Varank said Phase-1 human trials of the vaccine started on Saturday.

Stressing that the vaccine development process is not an easy one, Varank noted that the first phase can be completed in two months at the earliest.

"If all phases are successfully completed, we will have a vaccine candidate at the end of the year, with a capacity of 50 million doses," he said.

Varank said some countries wanted to work with Turkey in developing the vaccine.

"Some countries are willing to carry out Phase-3 trials [with Turkey]," he said.

He added: "If we engage in this type of work with them, the process will be shortened and the reputation of the vaccine will rise as it will be an international work."

The COVID-19 vaccine candidate, jointly developed by Mayda Gursel from Turkey's Middle East Technical University and Ihsan Gursel from Bilkent University, is based on the principle of mimicking a non-infectious form of the virus.