Ankara: Flight TK6175 took off from Beijing carrying China’s first batch of the novel coronavirus vaccine touched down at Ankara Esenboga International Airport in Ankara, the capital of Turkey on Wednesday, and will hopefully be put into use after two weeks, marking another milestone of how China’s self-developed inactivated vaccine reaching out to those in needs around the world.
The vaccination program will begin after a 14-day vaccine tests are completed, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on his Twitter account on Wednesday, shortly after the plane arrived, according to media reports.
Turkey has signed a vaccine procurement agreement with the Beijing-based Sinovac, the vaccine supplier, to receive some 50 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in batches, Koca said, according to The Paper’s report on Wednesday.
Turkey plans to vaccinate high-risk groups such as health care workers in the first phase, with Koca himself among the first to receive the vaccine, said the report.
Sinovac told the Global Times on Wednesday that the second batch of the CoronaVac will soon arrive.
First two batches can satisfy 1.5 million people in total as each person gets two doses. They will be all used for mass inoculation for public upon approval.
The company’s inactivated COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac showed a 91.25 percent efficacy in Phase III clinical trials in Turkey, Turkish health ministry announced on December 24.
Around 13,000 volunteers in Turkey participated in Sinovac’s Phase III clinical trials, according to Reuters.
The first batch of 20 million doses of Sinovac vaccines is scheduled to be received in December and January.
The second batch of 10 million doses will arrive in February. All the 50 million doses are scheduled to arrive in Turkey by the end of February, according to media reports.
– The Daily Mail-Global Times News exchange item
