The illustration shows a drop from a syringe with the logo of China’s Sinovac Biotech. File/AFP

Gulf Today Report

Chinese companies Sinovac and Sinopharm are in the late stages of testing vaccines near the level of development.

Turkey will sign a contract within days to buy some 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech.

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Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca told parliament “We will be able to procure at least 10 million doses of the Chinese vaccine in December. We want to increase this number. It will be just as much in January, too,”

Sinovac’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac triggered a quick immune response.

 “This figure can easily double, probably. A contract will be signed on this in one or two days,” he said at his ministry’s budget presentation in parliament.

Sinovac’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac triggered a quick immune response, but the level of antibodies produced was lower than in people who recovered from the virus, preliminary trial results showed on Wednesday.

CoronaVac and four other experimental vaccines developed in China are in late-stage trials to determine their effectiveness.