↓ SCROLL TO SEE MORE ↑

What are you looking for?

News

A vaccination campaign against the coronavirus pandemic continues exceeding projections

A vaccination campaign against the coronavirus pandemic continues exceeding projections

The Health Ministry announced that the country has now reached 1.4 million doses injected in one day on Wednesday, breaking a previous record of 1.2 million Tuesday.

Hospitals and clinics across the country seek to cope with overwhelming demand for jabs as the government continues including more groups to its list of people eligible for inoculation. The youngest age for eligibility was dropped to 35 Wednesday, roughly five months after the country started vaccinating the oldest citizens.

All across the country, long lines are formed outside hospitals, as well as in front of vaccination tents set up in central squares of cities, and in factories at industrial zones where health care crews provide on-site vaccination for workers.

The vaccination drive continues well into the late hours of the day, with doctors and nurses administering jabs to hundreds daily in each vaccination room established at hospitals. Larger hospitals have allocated more staff for vaccinations and expanded vaccination venues. More than 38 million doses were administered as of Thursday.

Garibe Adıgüzel, who oversees the vaccination drive at Ankara City Hospital – a large health care complex in the capital – said they had 50 vaccination rooms before but they now added more rooms and clinics for jabs as the campaign sped up. Three hospitals inside the complex were also designated as vaccination spots.

Adıgüzel told Anadolu Agency (AA) that they have a capacity of administering 28,000 doses daily and this can be increased to 32,000 at the weekends. Adıgüzel said they also reassigned staff working in other departments of the hospital to the vaccination venues.

The hospital has administered 1% of the total doses of Turkey and on Wednesday alone, administered 16,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Adıgüzel said.