Coronavirus vaccines from China will arrive in Turkey before the end of the year, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday after a Cabinet meeting in the capital Ankara.

Erdoğan's statement comes after the shipment from Sinovac was postponed for a couple of days.

Turkey has agreed to purchase 50 million doses of Sinovac's CoronaVac and had expected the first delivery of 3 million doses Monday.

It will also procure 4.5 million doses of the vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer, with an option to get 30 million more doses later.

Turkey's coronavirus death toll rose by 257 in the last 24 hours, Health Ministry data showed on Monday, bringing total deaths to 20,135.

The number of new cases stood at 15,197 in the same period, bringing total cases since the beginning of the pandemic to 2,162,775.

Ankara has imposed full weekend lockdowns and weekday curfews to curb infections.