UPDATE - Turkey administers nearly 1M coronavirus vaccine shots in 24 hours

UPDATES FIGURES; ADDS REMARKS BY TURKEY’S HEALTH MINISTER

By Seda Sevencan

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey administered nearly 1 million shots of COVID-19 vaccines in the last 24 hours, according to official figures released on Tuesday.

In total, the country has given over 43.7 million doses since it launched a mass inoculation drive in mid-January.

More than 29.14 million people have received their first doses, while over 14.58 million are fully vaccinated, the Health Ministry said.

It also confirmed 6,143 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, including 565 symptomatic patients. The number of new cases on Monday was 5,294.

Turkey's overall case tally is now over 5.38 million, while the nationwide death toll has reached 49,293 with 57 new fatalities.

As many as 5,214 more patients won the battle against the virus, taking the number of recoveries past 5.24 million.

Over 58.99 million coronavirus tests have been done to date.

The latest figures put the number of COVID-19 patients in critical condition at 791.

The Turkish health minister announced coronavirus infection rates on June 12-18 across the country's 81 provinces.

Sharing the data on Twitter, Fahrettin Koca noted that "although the rate of drop in the number of cases has decreased, it is not an obstacle for normalization," and said the pandemic will end through vaccination.

In Turkey’s largest cities, the number of cases per 100,000 people was 51.27 in the metropolis of Istanbul -- home to nearly one-fifth of Turkey’s population -- 93.11 in the capital Ankara, and 25.99 in the Aegean province of Izmir.

The provinces of Kars, Gumushane, Bartin, Balikesir, and Kirklareli reported the highest drops in the number of cases between those dates.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday unveiled Turkovac, the name for the country's indigenously developed COVID-19 vaccine candidate.

The vaccine development program has entered Phase 3 clinical trials on volunteers, starting at Ankara City Hospital in the country's capital, with Erdogan attending via videoconference.

Amid a nationwide fall in COVID-19 cases, Turkey is set to end pandemic curfews as of next Thursday, July 1, the country's president announced on Monday.

On June 1, Turkey eased some measures to fight the virus as the number of infections in the country dropped following a 17-day lockdown.

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed over 3.87 million lives in 192 countries and regions, with more than 178.92 million cases reported worldwide, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins University.