UPDATE - Turkey administers over 1.4M jabs in last 24 hours

UPDATES WITH REMARKS FROM HEALTH MINISTER; CHANGES HEADLINE, DECK, LEDE

By Dilan Pamuk, Merve Berker and Burak Bir

ANKARA (AA) – Turkey has administered over 1.44 million jabs of COVID-19 vaccines in the last 24 hours, according to official figures released on Wednesday.

Over 37.11 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered since the country launched a mass vaccination campaign in mid-January.

More than 23 million people have received their first doses, while over 14 million have been fully vaccinated, showed the Health Ministry count.

It also confirmed 6,221 new coronavirus cases, including 548 symptomatic patients, across the country in the last 24 hours. The number of new cases on Tuesday was 5,955.

Turkey's overall case tally is now over 5.34 million, while the nationwide death toll has reached 48,950 with 71 new fatalities.

As many as 4,632 more patients won the battle against the virus, raising the total number of recoveries past 5.21 million.

Over 57.6 million coronavirus tests have been done to date.

The latest figures put the number of COVID-19 patients in critical condition at 881.

Meanwhile, Turkey will start to vaccinate citizens aged above 35 on Thursday, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said following a virtual meeting of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board in the capital Ankara.

“We must never forget how we came to this day and what we left behind. We cannot build tomorrow if we forget about yesterday,” stated Koca, calling on everyone to get their jabs as soon as possible.

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

Since December 2019, the pandemic has claimed over 3.82 million lives in 192 countries and regions, with more than 176.72 million cases reported worldwide, according to the US-based Johns Hopkins University.