Turkey has temporarily stopped flights from Brazil due to the rise in cases of the new coronavirus variant, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter.
Ankara had previously halted flights from the United Kingdom, Denmark and South Africa due to the new variant.
This came as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan revealed on Friday that China had approved delivery of a second consignment of the CoronaVac vaccine and 10 million doses could arrive in Turkey by this weekend.
Turkey has already received an initial consignment of three million doses of the vaccine, produced by Sinovac Biotech, and has so far vaccinated more than 1.170 million people, mostly health workers and elderly people.
“(The second consignment) was approved in China,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.
“It is highly probable that it could come by the end of this week. We expect 10 million to come.”
Turkey has recorded more than 2.4 million infections and 24,640 deaths due to COVID-19 since March.
A rise in cases over the past months led the government to introduce weekday curfews and weekend lockdowns since December.
