Turkey has no plans to require vaccinations: Health minister

Turkey's health minister says his country has no plans to make vaccination against the new coronavirus mandatory but will work to convince the public about the safety of the vaccines.

Speaking to reporters following a meeting of the country's scientific advisory council on Dec. 9, Fahrettin Koca also said people who contracted the virus in the past four to six months, children, and pregnant women would not be vaccinated.

Turkey has ordered 50 million doses of the vaccine developed by Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, with the first shipment due to arrive in the coming days.

Turkey is also engaged in talks to obtain other vaccines and hopes that a Turkish vaccine will be ready for use in April.

Turkey is experiencing a surge in infections with confirmed cases of COVID-19 hovering above 30,000 per day. The country's death toll since March has topped 15,000.

The government will assess the effectiveness of recently imposed weekend and evening curfews before deciding whether to impose stricter lockdowns, the minister said.

Koca said a total of 216 health workers have died since the start of the outbreak.

Koca said: "There is over a five-fold rise in daily number of COVID-19 cases and 55% increase in deaths compared to the previous peak in April."

He said the southern provinces of Hatay, Adana and Mersin, the northern province of Samsun, and the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya continue to see a rise in figures.

He noted that major cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Konya and Gaziantep are seeing a slowing pace of increase in virus cases.

"Though this situation [decrease in numbers] is reflected in the status of outpatient clinics, inpatient and intensive care units continue to have...