A medical worker prepares a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, on Aug. 11, 2021. Turkish physicians are calling on more people to get vaccinated in order to lower the risk of getting infected with COVID-19. (Photo by Osman Orsal/Xinhua)
ISTANBUL, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- Turkish physicians are calling on more people to get vaccinated in order to lower the risk of getting infected with COVID-19.
Huseyin Pehlivan, working at the COVID-19 zone in the state-owned Prof. Dr. Cemil Tascioglu City Hospital, said he received two shots of China's Sinovac vaccine earlier this year and just took the third boost shot.
"Thanks to these vaccines, I did not get infected, even though I am with the COVID-19 patients all the time," Pehlivan told Xinhua.
He urged more people to receive vaccines, saying that "most of the coronavirus patients here are those who are not vaccinated."
Hakan Akelma, an anesthesiology and reanimation associate professor in Turkey's southeastern Diyarbakir province, said 65 in 100 COVID-19 patients in the hospital he works for are unvaccinated.
Akelma urged citizens on Twitter to get their vaccines done without delay to prevent a possible peak in the pandemic.
Gursel Bedir, provincial health director in the eastern Erzurum province, recently told reporters that the directorate conducted a study on COVID-19 patients treated in intensive care units in the last four months.
The study revealed that 460 in 589 coronavirus patients were those who have never been inoculated, Bedir said.
Esin Davutoglu Senol, a professor of infectious diseases at the Ankara-based Gazi University, said on Twitter that "vaccinated people are less likely to transmit the virus."
Turkey, with a population of 83 million, administered 80 million vaccine doses in total, according to the latest data published by the Health Ministry. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said the vaccination rate of those over 18 years old reached 50 percent on Wednesday. Enditem
