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By Hyonhee Shin and Josh Smith
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea has arranged to buy coronavirus vaccines for an additional 23 million people, its prime minister said on Tuesday, a day after authorities decided to cut back on initial vaccination plans, citing delays and efficiency issues.
The deals include vaccines from Novavax Inc for 20 million people and Pfizer products for 3 million, bringing the total number of people to be covered to 79 million, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said.
“The government has made efforts to deliver supplies early enough, but there is growing uncertainty over our plan for the first half of the year due to production issues with global drug makers and international competition to adopt more vaccines. “he said in a televised meeting.
US company Novavax also released a statement that it has signed a license agreement with South Korean manufacturer SK Bioscience to produce 40 million doses of its vaccines for South Korea.
With a population of 52 million, South Korea had already obtained enough doses for 56 million people of COVAX, Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, in a bid to start vaccinating healthcare workers and the elderly on February 26.
But authorities said Monday they would not use AstraZeneca vaccines on people aged 65 and over, overturning an earlier decision, due to insufficient efficacy data.
The government reduced its first-quarter immunization targets from 1.3 million to less than 760,000, also citing delayed shipments from the global COVAX vaccine sharing program.
Korea Disease Control and Prevention (KDCA) director Jeong Eun-kyeong said first trimester adjustments should not affect target of achieving “herd immunity” by November , although some independent health experts have questioned the feasibility of this schedule.
Pfizer’s additional 6 million-dose deal was intended to help meet that goal, and the U.S. drug maker has agreed to postpone the shipment date for an additional 1 million doses to the second quarter, Chung said.
The KDCA reported 457 more cases of the coronavirus as of midnight Monday, as the daily tally rebounds to 400 in four days amid increased testing after the Lunar New Year holiday last week.
The total number of infections in South Korea rose to 84,325 with 1,534 deaths.
(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Tom Hogue and Gerry Doyle)
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