ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey vaccinated more than 600,000 people in the first two days of COVID-19 shots developed by Sinovac in China, the Ministry of Health data showed on Friday, among the fastest implementation worldwide.
Ankara on Thursday launched the nationwide program, which first vaccinated health workers and vaccinated more than 285,000 people on the first day. As of 1601 GMT, the total was 600,040.
The government attributed its nationwide distribution of the vaccines earlier this week, as well as its digitized health records and hospital services for rapid surgery.
“We are an experienced country in the implementation of nationwide vaccination programs. Our infrastructure is more than capable of implementing this program in a controlled manner. We will win the battle with the pandemic together,” said Fahrettin Koca, Minister of Health. health, said on Twitter.
About 3.23 million people have been vaccinated in Britain and according to the website Our World in Data 2.16 million in Israel. In Russia, the RDIF Sovereign Wealth Fund said on Wednesday that 1.5 million Russians had been vaccinated with the Sputnik V vaccine.
Indonesia, which also uses the Sinovac shot, has vaccinated 15,301 people in the past two days, a senior health official there said. The official deployment began Wednesday, but medical workers and selected public workers were injected Thursday and Friday.
Global trials of the shot made by Sinovac Biotech Ltd, called CoronaVac, showed great efficiency rates, which led to criticism. [nL4N2JQ2Z3]
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has urged Turks to ignore the criticism. He received his first dose of vaccine on Thursday and urged other politicians to endorse the program.
Turkey has reported more than 2.3 million COVID-19 infections and 23,000 deaths since March. After a month of exclusions and curfew rules over the weekend, the daily death toll dropped to 169.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Dominic Evans; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Jonathan Spicer)