Turkey will sign a contract within days to purchase about 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca told parliament.

The Turkish government is also in talks to buy a vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech, the Anadolu news agency reported, citing statements made by Koca in parliament Wednesday night.

“We will be able to get at least 10 million doses of the Chinese vaccine in December. We want to increase that number. There will be about as many in January as well,” he said.

“That number could easily double, rather. A contract will be signed for that in a couple of days,” he said during his ministry’s budget presentation to parliament.

CoronaVac, Sinovac’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine, elicits a rapid immune response, but the level of antibodies it produces is lower than that seen in people who have recovered from the virus, according to preliminary results from published trials yesterday.

CoronaVac and four other experimental vaccines developed in China are in the final stages of testing to determine their effectiveness.

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