First batch of China’s COVID-19 vaccine arrives in Turkey

* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

The Turkish Airlines plane carrying SinoVac vaccines from China landed at Esenboğa Airport in Ankara at 05.44 a.m. local time today (December 30).

Having departed from Beijing with 17 containers of vaccines, the Boeing 777 plane carrying the first 3 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine ordered from China's SinoVac Biotech arrived in the capital city.

Announcing the arrival of the vaccines on Twitter, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said that vaccination will start following 14 days of tests.

"As soon as the tests are completed, our vaccination program will take place under the coordination of the General Directorate of Public Health. We will succeed together," the Health Minister has indicated further.

Koca previously announced that Turkey would be receiving 50 million doses of the SinoVac vaccine and that the first 20 million doses would be delivered during December 2020 and January 2021. The minister also announced that the country will purchase up to 30 million doses of another vaccine developed by Germany-based biotech firm BioNTech.

How will the vaccination proceed?

As every citizen will have two doses of the SinoVac vaccine, 1.5 million people will be vaccinated in the beginning.

The citizens aged 65 and over and with chronic diseases will follow it on the Health Ministry's online e-Nabız (e-Pulse) app whether their turn of vaccination has come or not. If they cannot use this system, they can also ask the family physicians about their turn to get vaccinated.

The vaccination will be done in four stages:

• First, health workers will be vaccinated. They will be followed by the citizens aged over 65 with chronic diseases. The elderly and people with disabilities staying in crowded places are also expected to be vaccinated. People will mostly be vaccinated in family health centers.
• In the second stage, it is expected that people working in high-risk environments and doing critical jobs will be vaccinated against the virus. Among these groups are soldiers, police officers, those working in courthouses and judicial services, teachers, academic personnel, those working in the food industry and the ones working in places with logistical importance for society (such as municipal affairs, electricity, water, garbage collecting, fire brigade, courier services).
• In the next stage of vaccination, the citizens aged 50 to 64 with chronic diseases, the ones aged 50-64 and the ones aged younger than 50 with chronic diseases will be vaccinated.
• Young adults aged 18-49 will be vaccinated in the last stage.

It was postponed twice before

Turkey ordered 50 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from China's SinoVac company. Health Minister Koca said that the vaccines would be tried in the units in Turkey for a period of two weeks.

The first delivery date of China's vaccine was announced as December 11, 2020; however, it was then stated that the vaccines would be delivered in the new year due to the "procedures in China".

Briefly about SinoVac vaccine

SinoVac Biotech, a private company in China, started the Phase 3 trials of its CoronaVac vaccine in Brazil in July, which was followed by the trials in Indonesia and Turkey. While Sinovac has not yet shared the data as to the final-stage trials, the authorities in Brazil, having tested the vaccine in Phase 3, said that it was the safest of five vaccines they had tested thus far.

On November 9, Brazilian government announced that it halted the studies due to a negative case in the previous month; it shared no details as to the issue. However, the tests started again two days later. (TP/SD)