Science Board

Turkey has begun administering nationwide vaccinations against COVID-19 starting with more than 1 million health care workers after authorities approved the emergency use of vaccine developed by China's Sinovac.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and members of the Health Ministry's Science Board were the first ones to receive the shots of the injection live on TV on Jan. 13.

The daily number of reported COVID-19 cases has declined in Turkey's large provinces, including Istanbul and the capital Ankara, the country's health minister has said, with experts voicing optimism that infections will drop faster thanks to restrictions.

Planned vaccinations for COVID-19 in Turkey will not be mandatory, the country's health minister has said, adding that however the public will be tried to be persuaded to get injected.

Turkey plans to re-open schools on Sept. 21 with measures in place to counter the coronavirus after three months of online courses for the new education year, Education Minister Ziya Selçuk said on Aug. 11.

Turkey may see a second peak of the coronavirus cases if people continue to ignore warnings and avoid necessary precautions, Professor Seçil Özkan from the Health Ministry's Science Board has said.

The recent spike in the number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases in Turkey prompted Health Minister Fahrettin Koca to issue yet another warning to the public that the outbreak is far from over.

"The figures [from June 13] made us face the reality that the outbreak remains a serious matter," Koca said on Twitter on June 14.

Experts and officials are concerned that the public's changing perception of the coronavirus outbreak may lead to a surge in the number of COVID-19 cases.

Health Ministry officials and experts at the Science Board had predicted that the daily confirmed cases would decline to around 500 in the weeks following the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which took place at the end of May.

Turkey's Health Ministry has changed the criteria for conducting the COVID-19 tests as people started to show symptoms other than fever and dry cough more often.

Initially, the Health Ministry was conducting COVID-19 tests on people who had fever, dry cough and respiratory difficulties, which are considered to be the most common symptoms of the disease.

Authorities in Istanbul, Turkey's most populous city, have announced a set of measures after scenes showing people largely ignoring rules on public transport vehicles.

The country this week scrapped the rule that public transport vehicles should operate at 50 percent capacity as Turkey started to relax most of the anti-virus curbs.

The Interior Ministry has lifted another transport restriction initially imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus by removing the obligation that 50 percent of seats in public transportation vehicles should be empty.