Just Earth News | @justearthnews | 27 Dec 2020, 10:03 pm Print
Turkey UNSPLASH
Ankara/Sputnik: The first shipment of Sinovac Biotech's vaccine against COVID-19 from China to Turkey has been delayed due to an outbreak of COVID-19 at Beijing customs, Turkish Minister of Health Fahrettin Koca said on Sunday.
"Due to the COVID-19 case at Beijing customs, its operations have temporarily stopped. Therefore, the delivery of vaccines has been pushed back one or two days," Koca wrote on Twitter.
Turkey is expecting to receive 50 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine, as well as 4.5 million doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine against the disease.
The country plans to carry out its COVID-19 vaccination program in four stages, beginning with the most at-risk groups.
On Sunday, the Turkish Ministry of Health registered 14,205 new positive tests for COVID-19, the smallest single-day increase to the country's case total since mid-November.
A four-day nationwide lockdown is expected to run from the evening of December 31 to the morning of January 4 as part of plans put forward by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.
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