Koca said that the number of people who tested positive for mutated variant of the virus has increased to 128 in Turkey.

“We must be wary of the new COVID-19 variant. One of the major forces behind surging case numbers in Europe is the mutated variant of the virus,” Koca indicated.

He also underlined that vaccine efforts had not been affected by the fact the virus has undergone mutation, adding that new mutations might also strain vaccine studies.

Turkey has so far reported 2,464,030 confirmed coronavirus cases, 25,736 deaths and 2,348,309 recoveries.