ANKARA

One in every four people in Turkey is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as 15 million people have now received both vaccine doses, the country’s health minister said on Tuesday.

Urging people to get their shots at the earliest, Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter that 25% of Turkey’s population aged 18 and above has been vaccinated.

He ruled out the possibility of procuring Pfizer vaccines rejected by France, stressing that Turkey was buying doses from German firm BioNTech.

Koca said the Delta coronavirus variant has been detected in 26 provinces of Turkey.

The total number of cases of the mutation recorded in Turkey stands at 224, with 134 of them in Istanbul, the minister said.

The spread of the Delta variant seems to be on the rise in Turkey, he added, but the country is still free of the Delta Plus strain.