UPDATE - Turkey has administered over 114.63M COVID vaccine doses: Data

ADDS STATEMENT FROM HEALTH MINISTER

By Dilan Pamuk and Gozde Bayar

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey has administered over 114.63 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines since it launched an immunization drive this January, according to official figures released Wednesday.

Over 55 million people have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, while around 47.71 million are fully vaccinated, the Health Ministry said.

Turkey has also given third booster shots to more than 10.9 million people.

The ministry also recorded 29,760 new cases, 214 fatalities and 28,803 recoveries over the past 24 hours.

Some 361,350 virus tests were done over the past day, the data showed.

Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said in a statement that while people under 30 comprised nearly half of the COVID-19 cases, elderly people constituted most of the fatalities and patients in intensive care units in the country.

Underlining the significance of vaccination in the fight against the pandemic, Koca once again called on citizens to get fully vaccinated.

“Vaccines provide very limited protection [against the coronavirus] without full vaccination,” he said. “The spread continues no matter how much effort we put in, especially if herd immunity has not been achieved.”

Regarding Turkey’s local vaccine Turkovac, Koca assured its reliability, saying that each stage of its development is evaluated by independent scientists.

He called on those who received two doses of inactive vaccines to volunteer for receiving Turkovac to support its development.

In August, Turkey expanded vaccine eligibility to young people aged 15 and older and those over 12 with chronic ailments.

Since December 2019, the coronavirus pandemic has claimed over 4.92 million lives in at least 192 countries and regions, with more than 241.97 million cases reported worldwide, according to US-based Johns Hopkins University.