Health minister Koca speaks to Turkish-German scientists behind vaccine

ANKARA- Anadolu Agency

Turkey's health minister on Nov. 12 spoke with the two Turkish-German scientists who are at the helm of developing the world's first effective coronavirus vaccine.

“I made a phone call with Professor Uğur Sahin,” Fahrettin Koca wrote on Twitter.

Şahin along with his wife Dr. Özlem Türeci, developed the vaccine against COVID-19 at their own company BioNTech in Germany, which attracted interest in scientific circles, Koca added.

“We discussed this development. As the ministry, we were in contact during the process,” he said.

The pharmaceutical company BioNTech, which Dr. Şahin and Dr. Türeci, founded in 2008, managed to develop an experimental vaccine together with its American partner Pfizer which was found to be more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19.

Both Şahin and Türeci were born to immigrant parents from Turkey who moved to Germany in the 1960s.