A member of a board advising the government on the COVID-19 outbreak measures, professor Mustafa Necmi Ilhan, announced that around 1.5 million people are set to be inoculated with a coronavirus vaccine.
Ilhan, who serves on the Health Ministry’s Social Sciences Board, told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Tuesday plans for mass vaccinations were underway and crews would soon be on the field to speed up the process.
The government announced that the first shipment of CoronaVac, a vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac, would arrive later this month. Some 50 million doses of the vaccine, which underwent human trials in the country in September, will be subject to examination and subsequently approved or rejected by health authorities. The state-run Turkish Medicine and Medical Devices Agency (TITCK) will evaluate the efficacy and results of the Phase 3 trials before greenlighting the vaccine.
Ilhan said it planned to disperse crews of three people to carry out vaccinations, and each crew should aim to inoculate at least 200 people a day. The vaccination is not mandatory. Health care workers and citizens 65 and older will be prioritized for the vaccination. Ilhan said several groups would be exempt from vaccination, including those under the age of 18, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, adding that those who have recovered from COVID-19 within the last four to six months will be low on the priority list. He announced that inoculations would launch simultaneously nationwide. “We have a population of around 83 million people, and we plan to have around 65 million people receive vaccine jabs by the end of June,” he added.
