Germany does not allow the entry of those who have been vaccinated with the Turkish TURKOVAC

Turks who have completed their vaccination with the TURKOVAC domestic vaccine will not be able to enter Germany in accordance with the country’s updated COVID-19 policies, according to the Sözcü newspaper.

To enter Germany, foreign nationals must be fully vaccinated with one of the approved vaccines produced by Moderna, BioNTech, AstraZeneca or Janssen, according to the Paul Ehrlich Institute for Vaccines and Biomedical Products in Germany.

Foreigners who have not been vaccinated with the appropriate formulation will not be allowed to enter the country, even if they have a negative PCR test. If unvaccinated applicants have a valid reason to enter Germany, such as serving as a witness in a trial, they will be allowed to enter after a period of quarantine.

Third-country nationals can apply for a Schengen visa from Germany, but will only be allowed to enter after being fully vaccinated.

Turkovac has been left out of the approved list of vaccines, along with those developed in China and Russia.

German broadcaster ARD last week expressed “doubts” about the effectiveness of the Turkish vaccine, saying there was no official data on it.

Turkovac could be tempting for “Turks receptive to nationalist tones,” wrote ARD’s Istanbul correspondent Oliver Mayer-Rüth, referring to concerns expressed by Turkish doctors and the Turkish Medical Association (TTB).

On January 4, Mehmet Ceyhan, head of Hacettepe University’s Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, said he “could not recommend” the Turkovac vaccine, as no publicly available data were available.

TTB Secretary General Vedat Bulut also spoke about the lack of data on Turkovac on January 5, saying “there is no vaccine to talk about”.

“There is a solution that claims to be a vaccine,” Bulut said, calling for more studies to be made public.

With information from ahvalnews