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Many nations in the Asia-Pacific region are launching the first injections of COVID-19 this week.
Here’s a look at the main developments:
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea’s leading infectious disease experts have warned that vaccines will not bring the disease to a quick end and called for continued vigilance on social distancing and the use of masks as the country prepares to give its first injections on Friday.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Disease Prevention and Control Agency, said Wednesday that it would be “quite a while” before the mass vaccination campaign brings the virus under control.
The country aims to vaccinate more than 70% of the population by November. But a safe return to a life without masks is highly unlikely this year, considering several factors, including the increasing spread of variants of the virus, said Choi Won Suk, professor of infectious diseases at Korea University Ansan Hospital.
“We are concerned that people will lower their guard when vaccination begins, which will trigger another massive wave of the virus,” Jeong said.
Jeong spoke when South Korea began shipping the first vaccines that rolled off a production line in the southern city of Andong, where local pharmaceutical company SK Bioscience is manufacturing the injections developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
The country will begin vaccination on Friday starting with residents and employees in long-term care facilities.
Separately, about 55,000 doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals treating COVID-19 patients will begin receiving the vaccines developed by Pfizer and BioNTech on Saturday.
AUSTRALIA
Two older people have been given higher-than-prescribed doses of the Pfizer vaccine, Australia’s health minister said Wednesday.
The 88-year-old man and 94-year-old woman were being monitored and the doctor who administered the injections had been withdrawn from the vaccination program, Health Minister Greg Hunt said.
The error occurred at the Holy Spirit nursing home in the Brisbane suburb of Carseldine on Tuesday, the day after the vaccine was launched in Australia, Hunt said.
“Both patients are being monitored and both patients do not show any signs of an adverse reaction,” Hunt said. He did not say how much more than the prescribed dose he injected.
Lincoln Hopper, executive director of St. Vincent’s Care Services, who owns the home, said he was “very concerned” for the well-being of the residents. The woman remained in the home while the man had been admitted to a hospital, Hopper said.
“This incident has been very distressing to us, our residents and their families and it is also very concerning,” said Hopper. “It has made us question whether some of the doctors who were assigned the job of administering the vaccine have received the proper training.”
Hunt later revealed that the doctor who administered the overdoses had not completed the online training required by all healthcare professionals involved in the program.
Hunt apologized for having told Parliament earlier that the doctor had received training. He said he had asked the Health Department to take action against the doctor and the company he works for.
THAILAND
Thailand received the first 200,000 doses of the Sinovac vaccine from China on Wednesday.
Another 117,000 doses of AstraZeneca are expected later on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha attended a ceremony with the deputy chief of mission of the Chinese embassy to receive the vaccines at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport.
Thailand has ordered a total of 2 million doses from China.
By the end of this year, local manufacturer Siam Bioscience will supply 200 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the region, of which 26 million are destined for Thailand. Thai officials have said they had secured an additional deal with AstraZeneca for a total of 61 million doses.
Many critics and opposition parties have criticized the government’s procurement plans for being too slow and inadequate.
Thailand, whose economy is built on income from tourism, aims to inject 10 million doses a month starting in June and plans to inoculate at least half the population by the end of the year.
MALAYSIA
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin received Malaysia’s first COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday at the start of the inoculation campaign.
“I didn’t feel anything at all. It was all over before I knew it, like a normal injection. Don’t worry, come over at any time, ”he said in a ceremony broadcast live.
The Director General of Health, Noor Hisham Abdullah, was also one of the first to be vaccinated.
Malaysia, which has signed agreements with several vaccine suppliers, including Pfizer and AstroZeneca, aims to vaccinate up to 80% of its 32 million inhabitants by next year.
In the first phase, priority will be given to more than half a million health and frontline workers.
PORCELAIN
Chinese regulators are looking at two more possible COVID-19 vaccines, one from the state-owned Sinopharm and one from a private company, CanSino.
Both companies said their vaccine candidates were submitted to regulators this week for approval.
China has already approved two vaccines that it has been using in a mass immunization campaign. One of them is also from Sinopharm, but it was developed by its Beijing subsidiary.
Sinopharm said its vaccine candidate is 72.51% effective. Both Sinopharm injections are based on inactivated viruses, a traditional technology by which a live virus is killed and then purified. The inactivated virus triggers an immune response.
The CanSino vaccine is a one-dose injection that relies on a harmless virus from the common cold, called adenovirus, to deliver the spike gene of the virus to the body. The body then produces the spike proteins and then generates an immune response. The technology is similar to the Astrazeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which rely on different adenoviruses.
CanSino said its vaccine candidate is 65.28% effective.
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