MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th April, 2021) South Korea is set to speed up its vaccination campaign after procuring huge supply of vaccines amid detection of 800 new COVID-19 cases last week and emergence of new strains, South Korea Acting Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki's said on Monday.
"With the latest deal with Pfizer, the country has laid the ground for advancing the timetable of herd immunity. We've also prepared for expanding vaccinations to those under age 18 and booster shots in response to virus variants," the official said as quoted by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.
On Saturday, South Korea signed a contract with Pfizer to purchase an additional 40 million vaccines (enough to vaccinate 20 million people), thus bringing the total number of COVID-19 vaccines ordered by the country to 192 million doses, which should be enough to vaccinate 99 million people, or almost twice the population of the country.
Hong addressed the public's concerns about vaccine shortages and the slow progress in the country's current vaccination rollout. As of February 26, the country has vaccinated a total of 2.26 million people (4.4% of total population).
"The country plans to pump up efforts to vaccinate 1.5 million people per day by May," the prime minister added.
Anxiety over vaccine safety has also spread across the country so AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines are only administered to specific age groups, including patients and workers at long-term care hospitals and people aged over 75.
The number of infected people in South Korea stands at 119,387 as of Monday. Authorities aim to vaccinate 3 million people by the end of April and 12 million people by the end of June, and achieve herd immunity by November.
