Turkey logged 40,786 new coronavirus cases on Friday, its highest since April, and the health minister warned that the Omicron variant had become dominant as Turks celebrated New Year's Eve without restrictions.
"Although there are no restrictions, we recommend that you act as if there are," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Twitter in what he called a New Year's "warning."
New COVID-19 cases have more than doubled from 18,910 a week ago.
The health ministry is allowing a fifth dose as a booster for people who’ve received two doses each of Sinovac and BioNTech vaccines.
Healthcare workers and people above 65 started off their inoculation early this year with China’s Sinovac’s inactivated vaccine. They became eligible for a third and fourth doses with Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine in response to the highly-contagious delta variant.
The fifth “reminder” dose would be available for people who had their fourth shot three months prior and appointments were opened Friday. Turkey is offering the two vaccine brands and began administering its domestically-produced inactivated vaccine Turkovac this week.
More than 83% of Turkey’s adult population have received two doses of vaccines and nearly 18.7 million people received a third.
