|
 The country, which has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases since August,
planned to procure 20% more flu vaccines for the winter than the
previous year to jab 30 million people. It had planned to start free
inoculation on Tuesday for some 19 million eligible people.
The head of South Korea's disease prevention agency said on Tuesday
that some doses of the vaccine, which need to be refrigerated, had
been exposed to room temperature while being transported to a
medical facility.
It was not immediately known how many doses were affected, and
authorities are looking into the entire batch of five million doses
that were scheduled for distribution on Tuesday.
"I want to make it clear that the problem is not with the
manufacturer's vaccine production, rather it is an issue raised
about the refrigerated temperature maintenance in the distribution
process," Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) chief
Jeong Eun-kyeong told reporters.
[to top of second column] |
So far 118,000 have been inoculated with flu shots and no adverse affects were
reported from the vaccination, said Jeong.
Some Asian countries have rolled out early and more aggressive influenza
vaccination programmes this year to reduce the potential of people contracting
the flu and COVID-19 simultaneously, which would cripple the load on healthcare.
KDCA reported 61 new coronavirus cases as of midnight Monday, taking the
national tally to 23,106 infections with 388 deaths.
(Reporting by Sangmi Cha; Editing by Miyoung Kim and Sam Holmes)
[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
