Patriarch Bartholomew Of Constantinople Receives COVID-19 Vaccine In Istanbul - Reports

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople Receives COVID-19 Vaccine in Istanbul - Reports

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has received a shot of the vaccine against the coronavirus in a clinic located at Turkey's Istanbul University, the Orthodox Times news website reported on Thursday

ATHENS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th January, 2021) Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has received a shot of the vaccine against the coronavirus in a clinic located at Turkey's Istanbul University, the Orthodox Times news website reported on Thursday.

In early January, 80-year-old Bartholomew said that he was planning to get the COVID-19 vaccine since he was in the risk group, and called on the faithful to adhere to the coronavirus related precautionary measures.

According to the news outlet, during the visit to the clinic, Bartholomew expressed gratitude to the clinic's staff and to all health care workers dedicated to their professional duty.

The patriarch expressed hope that more people would be vaccinated soon and the world would finally curb the spread of the virus.

The news website did not specify with which vaccine the patriarch was vaccinated.

Turkey launched its nation-wide vaccination on January 14, after it received the first batch of CoronaVac vaccines developed by China's Sinovac pharmaceutical company. The first Turkish citizen who received the vaccine was health minister Fahrettin Koca. According to Koca, Turkey planned to receive 50 million doses of CoronaVac vaccine by February and would acquire 4.5 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine by the end of March.