Turkey is devoted to eliminate the COVID-19 disease, despite increased daily instances due to the extremely contagious delta and mu variants.
The country has administered nearly 105 million coronavirus vaccine jabs since the launch of an immunization drive in January, official figures showed on Sunday.
Some 52.6 million people have gotten their first doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, while more than 41.9 million are fully vaccinated, the Health Ministry said.
The data showed that 84.74% of the country’s adult population has received at least one dose of a two-shot vaccine.
Turkey has also given third booster shots to over 9.7 million people.
Separately, the ministry reported 26,161 new coronavirus cases, while as many as 221 more people lost their fight against the disease in the last 24 hours.
As many as 335,244 tests for the virus were done over the past day.
“Case numbers should be compared with the average from one week ago, not the day before,” Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.
He urged everyone to follow the measures to curb the virus’ spread and get vaccinated.
Turkey started administering CoronaVac jabs to health care personnel in January. Later, authorities also started giving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to citizens who opted for it.
The country once ranked sixth in terms of vaccination in the world, but the drive has somewhat slowed down, now ranking eighth globally.
Health Minister Koca also previously underlined the importance of booster shots.
As Turkey seeks to ramp up the numbers in its COVID-19 vaccination program, the minister urged the public to get their third dose of vaccine.
COVID-19 booster shots increase protection against the disease, Koca said. In a written statement issued after a virtual meeting of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board that advises the government on pandemic measures, Koca said people who have received three shots account for less than 2% of the overall COVID-19 cases in the country. Nearly 90% of active cases in hospitals are people who have not been vaccinated or received only one jab, he explained. It is also expected that those who received two doses of mRNA vaccines will require a booster shot five to six months after being administered the second dose, he said.
“About 6 million of our citizens are eligible to receive their booster shots,” Koca stated, calling on the public to “not waste time” getting vaccinated.
