Turkovac, a domestically developed inactive COVID-19 vaccine, is finally available to the public after receiving emergency use approval. On Thursday, city hospitals became the first venues for inoculation with Turkovac, and the vaccination program with the local jab is expected to expand to all hospitals and other venues within weeks.
A product of the collaborative efforts of scientists from Erciyes University and the Health Ministry's Presidency of Turkish Health Institutes (TÜSEB), the vaccine relies on inactive vaccine technology like China's CoronaVac, the first vaccine Turkey started using against the coronavirus in January 2021. It is the third vaccine available to the Turkish public after Pfizer-BioNTech's messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine. The mass production of the vaccine recently started at a factory in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa and the first shipments were made to hospitals on Wednesday.
Citizens lined up outside vaccination clinics at city hospitals in the early hours of Thursday for the Turkovac vaccine. "I took all the risk and waited for this day," Mehmet Ali Kızıldağ, a 40-year-old man who abstained from vaccination, told Anadolu Agency (AA) outside the vaccination clinic at Istanbul's Başakşehir Çam ve Sakura City Hospital. "I applied for an appointment at midnight and came here before work," he said.
"I waited for a long time because I only had trust in Turkish scientists. I hope this vaccine will be a blessing for our country and the world and express my gratitude to everyone involved in its development," he said.
Turkey has reached more than 130 million doses in its vaccination program, but vaccine hesitancy still persists in some places. Authorities hope the local vaccine, rather than imports, may further decrease the hesitancy. "Everyone should have confidence in this vaccine and get vaccinated," Halil Çebi, another Turkovac supporter, said after getting his jab. Though, some preferred Turkovac as the first dose, others who applied for inoculation were those who had their first two doses with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Professor Nurettin Yiyit, the chief physician of an Istanbul hospital who also serves as a member of the Health Ministry's Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board, said it was "a day of pride" for Turkey. He highlighted that the vaccine stood out among others developed with other technologies. "You can store it in a standard refrigerator. This means that it can be used everywhere, where storing the other vaccines in very low temperatures is not possible. In this sense, this is a vaccine that can give hope to many countries as well," he told AA. Yiyit said people expressed great interest in Turkovac, and they received 500 appointments the moment they started accepting them late Wednesday.
The vaccine comes at a time of new highs in daily COVID-19 cases in the country. On Wednesday, the country reported more than 36,000 cases, the highest since April. Authorities blame the fast-spreading omicron variant, which was first detected in the country on Dec. 11, for the surge. After a meeting of the Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board on Tuesday, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said that although the cases have significantly increased, they have not led to a rise in hospitalizations and there was no rise in pneumonia rates among COVID-19 patients. Experts say people infected with the new variant mostly suffer from mild symptoms.