Turkey vaccinates over 1M people against virus in first week of campaign

Turkey has vaccinated more than 1 million people in the first week of its nationwide rollout of Covid-19 shots developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd, Health Ministry data showed.

The programme was launched last Thursday, starting with health workers and then including the elderly. 

More than 600,000 people were vaccinated in the first two days but the pace has slowed since then to around 100,000 people per day. 

Turkey began inoculating people at the age of 90 and over against coronavirus on Tuesday in nursing homes and care homes for the elderly.

Ankara launched the programme last week, vaccinating health workers first, and inoculated more than 285,000 people on the first day.

Following the first administration of vaccine, the second dose will be administered 28 days later.

Health officials have spent two weeks testing the safety of the doses delivered from China after preliminary studies involving 7,371 volunteers in Turkey showed Sinovac's vaccine to be 91.25 percent effective.

But a bigger trial in Brazil put the efficacy of Sinovac at 50.4 percent, while a third one in Indonesia resulted in a 65.3 percent success rate.

READ MORE: What's behind varying efficacy data for Sinovac's Covid-19 vaccine?

Talks underway for vaccine deals

Turkey has ordered 50 million doses of Sinovac's CoronaVac and has received 3 million so far and 20 million of them are due to arrive by the end of the month.

The official Anadolu news agency reported that Turkey also sent 20,000 doses to Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is recognised only by Ankara.

Turkey is also in talks for Sputnik V vaccine and the shot developed by Pfizer Inc-BioNTech and is working to develop one domestically.

In December, Turkey also reached a deal to receive 4.5 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab by late March.

Officials hope to receive up to 30 million doses from Pfizer-BioNTech.

Turkey has seen its official daily death tolls slip back down to under 200 after imposing weekend lockdowns and other daily restrictions in November.

Last month, it began requiring passengers arriving from abroad to submit negative PCR tests.

READ MORE: Concern among Muslims over halal status of Covid-19 vaccine