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Turkey rolls out homegrown vaccine amid surge in Omicron cases

Turkish health officials claim the vaccine Turkovac is efficient against Omicron, while experts warn of a lack of data.
A nurse prepares a syringe with the Sinovac's COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine during a vaccination campaign in the village of Oguzlar, a hundred of kilometres away from Ankara on July 8, 2021.

Turkey, recording a six-month peak in its COVID-19 infections due to the spread of Omicron, rolled out its homegrown vaccine, Turkovac, with the assurances that it was “efficient” against the new variant.

“Though we have an increase in the people who have been infected largely due to the new Omicron variant, there are fewer people hospitalized and fewer deaths,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after a three-hour Cabinet meeting Jan. 3, where the main issues were health and the much-awaited 30% increase in civil servants’ salaries.

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