ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey has began initial talks to procure the Sputnik-V vaccine from Russia, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Thursday, adding Ankara would receive a total of 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines by the end of May.
Turkey has until now been using COVID-19 shots developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech Ltd and it has carried out 14.13 million inoculations, with 8.18 million people having received a first dose, since Jan. 14 when the nationwide rollout began.
In a statement after a meeting with his coronavirus science council, Koca also said Turkey would be receiving 4.5 million doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech by early April.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu)
