BioNTech's Uğur Şahin to attend Health Ministry's Scientific Advisory Board meeting

Photo: AA/File

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The Health Ministry's Coronavirus Scientific Advisory Board will hold a meeting today (May 20) to discuss gradual reopening steps and vaccination.

Uğur Şahin, the CEO of BioNTech, the company that has developed one of the major vaccines against the virus, will also attend the meeting via videoconference, the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA) reported.

Earlier in the week, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said Turkey would procure 30 million doses of the BioNTech vaccines next month. "I want these figures to be heard from professor Uğur," he had said.

Turkey will also receive 10 million doses of China's Sinovac in June, according to Koca.

Turkey, a country of 83 million people, has so far administered 27.1 million vaccine jabs with 11.5 million people receiving two doses, according to the Health Ministry's live tracker. 

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The country has mostly relied on China's Sinovac while also receiving about four million doses of the BioNTech vaccine.

The daily number of vaccinations has reduced over the past month due to a delay in the delivery of the Sinovac vaccine, for which Minister Koca blamed the government of China.

Uğur Şahin, 55, and his spouse Özlem Türeci, 53, are the founders of the BioNTech company, the market value of which has reached 21 billion dollars after the development of the vaccine, putting them among the 100 wealthiest people in Germany.

Şahin was born in İskenderun, Turkey and moved to West Germany with his family at the age of four. Türeci is also the child of an expat family in Germany and was born in Germany. (AS/VK)