Ahmet Sertan Usul
15 January 2021•Update: 15 January 2021
ANKARA
No serious side effects have so far been reported by 8,000 healthcare staff who were vaccinated in Turkey's capital Ankara, according to a head physician on Friday.
“We have not experienced a serious reaction that needs to be treated,” Aziz Ahmet Surel, the chief physician at Ankara City Hospital, told Anadolu Agency.
Surel said that there have been sporadic reports of pain in shoulder and a drop in blood pressure.
“We find it normal in a sample of 8,000 people,” Surel said.
He said after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan got his vaccine jab at their hospital on Thursday, the number of people getting vaccinated started to rise.
With 130 vaccination rooms, Surel said the hospital has the capacity to administer 7,500 vaccinations a day.
According to data from the Health Ministry, Turkey has 1.1 million health workers who will be vaccinated within a month.
Two doses of the vaccine will be administered 28 days apart. Those who recovered from COVID-19 will not be vaccinated in four to six months.
The first batch of 3 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by China’s Sinovac Biotech arrived in Turkey on Dec. 30.
This week Erdogan announced that restrictions will be eased gradually as COVID-19 cases have been significantly decreasing recently.
Since December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed almost 2 million lives in 191 countries and regions.
Over 93.24 million cases have been reported worldwide, with recoveries now over 51.48 million, according to figures compiled by the US’ Johns Hopkins University.
The US, India, and Brazil remain the worst-hit countries in terms of cases.
*Writing by Sena Guler
