Kurdish-majority provinces have lowest Covid vaccination rates

Photo: AA/File

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More than 20.5 million coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered so far in Turkey, with 7.9 million people receiving two doses, according to the Ministry of Health figures.

Turkey started its mass vaccination campaign in early January. The country mostly relies on China's Sinovac company for Covid vaccination while it has also procured four million doses of Pfizer's BioNTech.

More than 3.3 million doses were administered in İstanbul, the country's largest and hardest-hit city by the pandemic.

The city where the lowest number of vaccine doses have been administered was Hakkari, a Kurdish-majority province in the east.

(Image: Ministry of Health)

Predominantly Kurdish-populated provinces in the east and southeast have low vaccination rates compared to other provinces, the ministry data shows.

The number of vaccine doses administered per 100 people in some eastern and southeastern provinces was 5.62 in Şırnak, 7.6 in Urfa, 10.77 in Diyarbakır, and 11.03 in Van.

The vaccination rate is 22 percent in İstanbul and 29 percent in Ankara, the capital, and 31.8 percent in İzmir, the third-largest province of the country.

Vaccination rates for some other provinces in various parts of the country: Çanakkale - 42.6 percent, Rize - 31.5 percent, Uşak - 30.8 percent, Samsun - 30 percent, Mersin - 26.6 percent, Bayburt - 21.2 percent. (RT/VK)