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SEOUL, South Korea – South Korean authorities are investigating the mysterious deaths of nine people after being vaccinated against seasonal flu. And while officials said there was no clear link between the deaths and the vaccines, there were concerns that the cases could cause panic at a critical time for vaccination efforts.
The deaths occurred in the past week, including five reported Wednesday. Authorities said two of the deaths could have resulted from anaphylactic shock, a severe allergic reaction, but did not provide further details. The other deaths are under investigation, but officials were quick to rule out the vaccines themselves, which they said were all from local drug companies and not from batches for export, as the main cause.
They also vowed to intensify a government flu vaccination campaign to prevent the country’s health care system from becoming overloaded with flu patients, who have similar early symptoms such as fever and cough, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“We have not found a direct connection between these deaths and vaccines, or a relationship between deaths and reported adverse effects after flu vaccines,” said Jung Eun-kyeong, commissioner of the Agency for Disease Prevention and Control. from Korea. “We do not believe that the situation requires the suspension of the inoculation program.”
Ms Jung called a special press conference on Wednesday after the rapid series of deaths, starting with a teenager who died on Friday, made headlines in South Korea. But with autopsies likely to take days, public anxiety is high in a country with many anti-vaccination activists.
South Korea, and many other countries, have viewed annual flu vaccination programs as critical to efforts to fight coronavirus as well, especially for children, the elderly, pregnant women, and medical personnel. Officials unveiled plans to purchase 20 percent more flu vaccines this winter than last year to inoculate up to 30 million people, more than half the nation’s population.
But the campaign ran into trouble last month when it was discovered that some vaccines supplied by a local company, which had to be refrigerated at all times, had been exposed to room temperature while in transit. A recall was ordered and authorities said that some 2,300 people had received doses of the defective batch, which was intended primarily for young children and adolescents.
Still, officials said that alone shouldn’t have made the vaccines dangerous. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the concern about a lack of temperature control is that it can make vaccines ineffective, rather than toxic.
Then earlier this month, 615,000 doses of a flu vaccine shipped by another company were also recalled after some of them were found to contain white particles, which the government described as a harmless protein. Almost 18,000 people had received doses before they were recalled.
None of those batches had reported serious damage, although dozens of people who received those doses reported fever or other minor complaints, which are common reactions to flu shots, authorities said. None of the nine people reported dead received vaccinations that had been recalled, they added.
After suspending the adolescent vaccination program for three weeks, it was resumed on October 13. Three days later, a 17-year-old boy in Incheon, west of Seoul, died after receiving his vaccine. On Tuesday, a 77-year-old woman was found dead at her home in Gochang, south of Seoul, after having been vaccinated the day before. On the same day, an 82-year-old man who had also been inoculated died in the central city of Daejeon.
Four of the five people who died Wednesday were between 53 and 89 years old. No information has been released about the other two people who died, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday.
The nine who died, all of whom had received flu shots in the past, received vaccinations supplied by several different local drug companies, authorities said.
“Since most of the people who got the flu shot with the same vaccines reported no major problems, we concluded that these vaccines do not contain toxic materials,” said Kim Joong-gon, professor of medicine at the National University. from Seoul, who led a team of researchers. . “We conclude that we can exclude the vaccine as a problem.”
In general, flu vaccines have a good safety record. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the body of scientific evidence over decades “overwhelmingly” supports its safety.
In South Korea specifically, officials said that since 2009, 25 people in South Korea had died after receiving flu vaccines, but that only one of the deaths was related to the process.
Nearly 13 million South Koreans have received flu shots so far this year, 8.3 million of them free of charge as part of the government program. There have been complaints about mild reactions to vaccines, but they are normal with every flu season. And Ms. Jung said on Wednesday that some of the complaints were likely influenced by media coverage of the recalls.
Anxiety over flu shots could also undermine public confidence in an eventual coronavirus vaccine, which is already failing as countries compete for approval from their candidates. In a survey this month of 2,500 people in Gyeonggi-do, a populated province surrounding the South Korean capital of Seoul, 62 percent of those surveyed said they would not get vaccinated against the coronavirus until after the vaccine was shown to it was completely safe.
Many scientists have expressed concern about the speed with which coronavirus vaccines are being developed. But getting a vaccine approved is just one hurdle. Managing public perception is another, especially if there are concerns about mishandling of the vaccine during transport and storage.
Most vaccines must be kept at low temperatures from the time they are manufactured to the time they are administered to prevent spoilage, what the industry calls a “cold chain.” The flu vaccine, for example, should be kept refrigerated, between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.
That could complicate the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine. Several of the top candidates in development should be kept at temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit).
In the United States, trucking and warehousing companies struggle to build “freezer farms.” Airlines are outfitting their planes with freezers, and glass vial makers are inventing methods to make vials that won’t crack in very cold temperatures. Couriers like UPS and FedEx are making dry ice.
But cold facilities are lacking in other parts of the world, including Central America, rural India and Southeast Asia, which experts say could hamper mass immunization.
Typically, a country’s drug regulator investigates multiple reports of adverse reactions to vaccines in an attempt to determine the frequency of such events and whether there are causal links. While these investigations are ongoing, countries may choose to continue with the vaccination program if the benefits are considered to outweigh the risks.
Choe Sang-Hun reported from Seoul, South Korea and Sui-Lee Wee from Singapore.
