ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th July, 2020) Turkey is continuing its cooperation with Russia and China on developing the vaccine from the coronavirus disease, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said.
In early June, Koca said that the health ministers of Turkey and Russia had agreed to cooperate on clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccines.
"We are engaged in cooperation with Russia and China on developing the vaccine. The vaccine may be developed in the first quarter of the next year," Koca told reporters in Ankara on late Wednesday.
Later, the Turkish minister said that 942 new COVID-19 cases had been registered in the country within the past 24 hours.
"Today, 942 new cases have been discovered, the total number of those infected has reached 228,924. [Today] 14 patients have died, the death toll amounts to 5,659 people," Koca wrote on his Twitter page.
The number of recoveries has increased by 996 to 212,557 within the same period of time.
A day earlier, Turkey registered 963 new coronavirus cases and 15 fatalities.
The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 16.8 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 662,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.
