ISTANBUL: It was one of the busiest days in a pandemic hospital in Istanbul, with hundreds of people waiting at COVID-19 vaccination rooms and on the benches in the garden for their appointments.
Feriha Oz Emergency Hospital, established last year and with a capacity of 1,008 beds on the Asian side of the city, has never seen such a crowd since the nationwide inoculation drive started in January, according to Mehtap Karaca Demiray, a nurse in charge of the vaccination operation.
“Today, we have more than 1,400 appointments,” Demiray told Xinhua on Thursday.
“We started at 8:30 in the morning, and we will finish at midnight.”
Turkey began its drive with China’s Sinovac vaccine on Jan. 14, with priority given to health care professionals and the elderly.
Until the beginning of April, the country solely used Sinovac’s CoronaVac jabs. It later included the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the program and will add Russia’s Sputnik V in the coming days.
Twenty-five million vaccines have been administered in the country so far.
Turkish doctors agree that they now have enough data in the field to review the efficacy of CoronaVac more precisely.
–The Daily Mail-CGTN
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