Contradicting health minister, Erdoğan says Turkey has enough Covid-19 vaccine supplies

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Turkey currently has enough Covid-19 vaccines, and no difficulties are expected in vaccine supplies, President and Justice and Development Party (AKP) Chair Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said.

In addition to current and incoming supplies of the Chinese Sinovac and European/US BioNTech shots, talk with Russia "are ongoing currently, hopefully, the Sputnik vaccine is coming, it will come," Erdoğan told reporters after Friday prayers in İstanbul. Turkey today granted emergency approval for Russia's Sputnik V vaccine.

The president's statement comes after Health Minister Fahrettin Koca admitted that the country would have a vaccine shortage in the next two months.

Vaccination has slowed down as the daily number of vaccinations was slightly more than 200,000 over the past two weeks whereas the ministry and medical organizations say the country has the capacity to inoculate a million people per day.

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On additional supplies of the BioNTech shots, Erdogan also reaffirmed that the firm BioNtech had made a promise and that the jabs would be delivered to Turkey.

He added that he will talk to Russia's President Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping about the vaccine issue.

Minister Koca previously blamed China's Sinovac company for not delivering vaccines to Turkey in accordance with the agreement made.

As of today, Turkey has administered 22.8 million vaccine doses with 9.1 million people having received two doses, according to the Health Ministry's online tracker.