Turkey to leave pandemic behind 'soon': Erdoğan

ANKARA

Turkey will overcome the COVID-19 pandemic soon with its mass vaccination campaign, said the country's president on June 20.

Responding to a question during an online event to mark Father's Day, Erdoğan said that Turkey has been ahead of other countries in everything from health services to public safety since the beginning of the outbreak.

“At a time when supplying vaccines was very difficult, we are running a fast vaccination schedule thanks to the connections we have made in a timely manner. We have some setbacks, but we have also overcome these delays. We are in good shape right now. I hope we will overcome this calamity soon,” he said.

Erdoğan said the domestic vaccination studies are continuing, and the target is to start production by September-October.

“Currently, the rate of infection has dropped seriously. But we need to decrease this rate further. The number of cases is around 5,000 per day. We think this is too much. The number of daily deaths is around 50; we don't want this either,” Erdoğan said.

“It is our hope that we will both decrease the number of cases to double digits and decrease the number of deaths to single digits,” he said, adding vaccination is the greatest tool to achieve that.

“We are also good at importing vaccines, and we will continue to do so, rapidly,” he added.

Responding to a question on anti-vaxxers, Erdoğan called for respecting science, saying: “It's impossible to deny science.”

“Every individual of our nation should know that they have an opportunity to access vaccines that billions of people in the world have not been able to reach,” he said.

“It is the responsibility of scientists to develop the vaccine and make it applicable to humans. Our duty is to use the vaccine developed by the best experts in their fields while respecting science. We cannot exclude ourselves from a process that encompasses the entire population of the world,” he added.