Fahrettin Koca

Turkey has started to give the locally developed inactivated vaccine, Turkovac, as a booster shot to those who have already received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA jab.

Turkey's Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has warned about the COVD-19 situation in Istanbul, noting that most of the new cases are registered in the country's largest city as the number of daily infections remain above 70,000.

Turkey will give a dose of a locally developed COVID-19 vaccine, Turkovac, to those who have already received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said.

Nearly 18 million Turkish students begin their two-week winter break after completing their first semester and receiving their mid-term report cards on Jan. 21.

The mid-term holidays will end on Feb. 6.

Education Minister Mahmut Özer asked teachers not to give homework to children so that both the teachers and the students relax during the holidays.

The next three months will be crucial for efforts to confront challenges from the Omicron strain of COVID-19, a health expert has said, calling for speeding up the drive to give booster shoots.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca last week announced the first cases of the Omicron variant in Turkey.

Turkey has detected the first cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the country's health minister has said, calling on people to remain calm but vigilant.

"One of the [Omicron] cases was in Istanbul and the other five cases were in [the western province of] İzmir," Fahrettin Koca told lawmakers in parliament on Dec. 11 during discussions on the Health Ministry's 2022 budget.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Dec. 11 that the first six cases of COVID-19's Omicron variant have been detected in Turkey.

"The symptoms are very mild," Koca said, adding that there was no hospitalization for these patients. The minister's remarks came during the budget talks in the parliament. 

The number of COVID-19 cases in Turkey has been steady for more than a month, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said, urging people to stick to the anti-virus measures to keep the pandemic under control.

Initial data suggest that locally developed vaccine Turkovac is very effective against COVID-19, an expert has said, while Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has voiced concern over the slow pace in the jab drive, particularly in the second shot of the vaccine.

Turkey's southern provinces have recorded the sharpest increase in weekly COVID-19 cases, data given by a top senior official has shown.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca disclosed the weekly figures of COVID-19 cases throughout the country recorded between Nov. 20 and 26.