Turkey in talks for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine

ANKARA

Turkey is holding talks for the procurement of a potential vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, the country’s health minister has said.

“If the vaccine obtains its license, Turkey may get one million doses of the vaccine by the end of the year. And we are in talks to gradually go up to 25 million within a year starting from January,” Fahrettin Koca said on Nov. 18, speaking at the parliament’s planning and budget commission.

Pfizer announced on Nov. 18 that the final results from the late-stage trial of its COVID-19 vaccine show it was 95 percent effective, adding it had the required two months of safety data and would apply for emergency U.S. authorization within days.

Pfizer said it expects to make as many as 50 million vaccine doses this year, enough to protect 25 million people, and then produce up to 1.3 billion doses in 2021.

Turkey is about to sign an agreement within days for the Chinese vaccine, too, Koca noted.

“We may buy 10 million doses of this injection in December and another 10 million doses in January, but the amount could be double,” the minister said.

Koca recalled that the phase three tests of those jabs are carried out at universities presently and added that there have not been any recorded problems with those vaccines.

Regarding the development of a vaccine in Turkey, the minister noted that studies continue on 16 potential injections and the locally developed vaccine could be available in April.

“The phase one human trials are being conducted for one of those vaccines,” Koca added.