[ad_1]
SEOUL: South Korea said on Monday (Dec. 7) it has signed agreements to provide coronavirus vaccines to 44 million people next year, as the country battles a wave of infections that authorities say could overwhelm its system. doctor.
The government has agreed to buy 20 million doses each from AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna, and another 4 million doses from Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen, enough to cover up to 34 million people, Health Minister Park Neung-hoo said at a Informative session.
Additional doses for 10 million people will be obtained through the World Health Organization’s global vaccine project, known as COVAX, he added.
“Initially we had planned to insure vaccines for 30 million people, but we decided to buy more, as there is uncertainty about the success of candidate vaccines and competition is intense between countries for advance purchases,” he said.
Shipments of the vaccine would begin no later than March, but authorities would watch the vaccines perform in other countries for several months to ensure safety. Widespread vaccination is likely to begin in the second half of next year.
READ: South Korea to push testing as COVID-19 surge threatens ‘medical collapse’
Despite the current surge in cases, South Korea’s relative success in suppressing earlier waves meant the government didn’t need to rush a vaccine, Park said.
“We don’t see the need to rush into vaccination without making sure the risks of the vaccines have been verified,” he said.
The first vaccines would likely go to medical workers, the elderly and medically vulnerable, and social workers.
WAVE OF INFECTIONS
Korea’s Disease Prevention and Control Agency reported 594 new coronavirus cases as of midnight Monday, bringing the country’s total to 38,755, with 552 deaths.
Unlike South Korea’s two previous waves of infections, which focused primarily on a handful of facilities or events, the new wave is driven by smaller, hard-to-track groups in and around the densely populated capital of Seoul.
Vice Health Minister Kang Do-tae said the government had not been able to trace the origin of 26 percent of all cases, and the positivity rate nearly quadrupled in one month to about 4 percent.
“If social distancing is not implemented properly, the outbreaks in the Seoul metropolitan area would lead to increased broadcasts across the country,” Kang said at a meeting of health officials according to a transcript from the Ministry of Health.
Health authorities predicted daily cases to be around 550-750 this week, possibly rising to 900 next week.
If such predictions are accurate, Kang said the country’s healthcare system could collapse.
“There could be a dangerous situation where it becomes difficult not only to treat COVID-19 patients but also to provide essential medical services,” he said.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday called for expanded coronavirus testing and more comprehensive monitoring as infections continued to rise despite the imposition of increasingly restrictive social distancing measures.
Seoul was not currently in talks to buy vaccines from either Russia or China, Park said.
CHECK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak and its developments
Download our app or subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak: https://cna.asia/telegram
