The agreement, which will commence in May, will take around six months to materialize, Koca said at a press conference Wednesday.
Acknowledging difficulties in the availability of other vaccines during the next two months, which will be resolved later, he said, the Minister noted that the time between the first and second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech (American-German) drug will be extended from six to eight weeks.
RELATED:
Turkey and Russia Officially Launch TurkStream Pipeline
He also announced that in the coming days Turkey will begin third phase clinical trials for one of their homegrown preparations.
Regarding a strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus detected in India, the minister said that it has already been detected in at least five people in Istanbul, the country's most populated city.
The cases infected with the Indian strain have been followed closely in Instanbul, Koca indicated without referring to specific complications presented in the patients.
Turkey has reported over 4.71 million COVID-19 cases since the onset of the pandemic, as well as 39,000 deaths.