Pandemic and infodemic go hand in hand in the world and apparently, in Turkey, where anti-vaxxers and skeptics raise their voices on social media. Repeated reassurances by top health authorities and experts seek to convince the public to get a jab against the deadly coronavirus, though it remains voluntary.

The scale of the outbreak and the devastation it has left behind appear to have convinced more and more people to consider the vaccine. A survey by the Istanbul-based research company, Genar, highlights the increasing public approval of COVID-19 vaccines. The pro-vaccine stance is steadily growing amid a barrage of conspiracy theories spread virtually everywhere on social media. At the same time, there has also been confusion over whether a new strain of the virus that emerged in several countries would be immune to vaccines already developed and in development.

Genar President Ihsan Aktaş told the Turkish language daily, Sabah, that people's trust in vaccines rose to a rate of around 70% from around 50% and this rate is expected to increase. "People are increasingly more conscious about the disease and measures taken to prevent it from spreading. Our first question in the survey was whether they were afraid of being infected and 70.7% of participants said yes. We also see a decline in the number of people who did not take the pandemic seriously, people who believed it was caused by a lab-grown virus and people who thought the outbreak was exaggerated. The public knows the virus is really dangerous and could become more so if measures are abandoned. Interestingly, the rate of people who are scared of the virus is near the rate of those who are willing to be vaccinated," Aktaş said.

Turkey is set to receive an initial shipment of 3 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine developed by China's Sinovac. The shipment was set to arrive early Monday, but Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced late Sunday that it was postponed one to two days due to a case of COVID-19 in Beijing customs. The country has agreed to purchase 50 million doses of CoronaVac. CoronaVac has been in human trials in Turkey since September along with a vaccine developed by U.S.-based Pfizer and Germany's BioNtech. The government will also procure 4.5 million doses of that vaccine, with an option to get 30 million more doses later.

A vaccination drive is set to start after the arrival of vaccines. Health care workers will be the first to be vaccinated and will be followed by citizens aged 65 and older. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Health Minister Fahrettin Koca are also set to take jabs, to set an example to the public. The next group will be adults living in rehabilitation centers, shelters and other crowded residential places. Then, people working in sectors vital for supporting the country's needs and those working in high-risk environments and critical jobs. People below the age of 50 and without any chronic diseases will be the last group to get vaccinated.

Aktaş said in proportion to the number of people vaccinated, more people would be inclined to get a jab and when doubts over vaccines' side effects are cleared, more and more people would accept vaccination. He said one different result of the survey was women had less confidence than men in vaccines. He believes the number of people who do not want to get inoculated would likely drop from 30% in their future surveys. "We also asked them whether they would change their mind if their concerns about the vaccines are addressed and 47.6% among those opposing the vaccine said they would get a jab if results from vaccinations turn out good," Aktaş stated.

Though the first doses would be from imported vaccines, Turkey also looks forward to developing its own. The nearest date for one of the vaccines in the last stages of trials is April 2021. Aktaş says people have "great expectations" from the locally made vaccine, and 88.9% of those who participated in the survey expressed their trust in it.

Vaccines are critical to eliminate or at least, curb the pandemic, especially for Turkey which was embattled with a surge in the number of cases since the beginning of autumn. Though the number of cases dropped for a third consecutive day on Sunday, the total number stands at more than 2.1 million while the death toll nears 20,000. Recoveries currently stand at around 2 million. The number of tests carried out since the outbreak began in Turkey in March reached more than 23.7 million.

"Our number of cases and patients continues to decline. The number of contacts and test demands are also decreasing. We hope to see the impact of the measures and restrictions on our losses soon. The continuity of the fight will make the success permanent," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter after the latest daily figures were announced Sunday.

The country has imposed full weekend lockdowns and weekday curfews to curb infections. A lockdown will also be in effect from 9 p.m. on Dec. 31 to 5 a.m. on Jan. 4 as part of the measures against the pandemic on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Genar's survey indicates that the public believes Turkey's health care system endured the challenge of the pandemic. About 86.3% of participants responded positively to the question of whether the system succeeded in controlling the outbreak. "This is very significant as it shows that people have trust in health services despite black propaganda and people can see how the health services progressed in recent years. We asked whether investments in health care in the past two decades helped against the pandemic, and 95% of participants said it contributed to the fight against the pandemic," Aktaş said.

"When the pandemic started spreading around the world, we had concerns that Turkey did not have enough intensive care units or ventilators. People thought they would be insufficient to cope with such a large-scale pandemic. However, health investments prevented us from seeing scenes common in the U.S. or European hospitals struggling with a high number of cases," he added.