South Korea to Receive 117,000 Doses of Pfizer Vaccine on February 26

[경향신문]

On February 26, the COVID-19 vaccine by Pfizer for 58,500 people (117,000 doses) will arrive in South Korea. Authorities will begin administering this vaccine to medical staff treating COVID-19 patients on February 27.

On February 21, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun made the announcement and said, “We will receive 117,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the COVAX Facility.”

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the latest delivery of vaccines is scheduled to arrive at Incheon International Airport at 12:10 p.m. February 26, and authorities will begin administering the vaccine to medical staff treating COVID-19 patients the next day, February 27. The Pfizer vaccine will be administered in February following the distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which will be the first COVID-19 vaccine to be administered on February 26.

The previous day, the Central Disease Control Headquarters announced that 93.8% of the people scheduled to receive the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines agreed to the inoculation.

The AstraZeneca vaccine will be supplied to care hospitals and facilities, and of the 201,464 patients and staff in care hospitals 186,659 (92.7%) agreed, and 102,612 (95.5%) of the 107,466 patients and staff at care facilities expressed wishes to receive the vaccine. Of the 58,029 medical staff at hospitals treating COVID-19 patients, who are scheduled to receive the Pfizer vaccine, 54,910 (94.6%) agreed to receive the vaccine.

To reach the government’s goal of establishing herd immunity by this coming November, all of the people who are scheduled to receive the vaccines have to be vaccinated by then. Herd immunity is established when 70% of the total population has antibodies, but the average effectiveness of the vaccines distributed in South Korea is somewhere around 80%. Besides, children and teenagers under the age of 18 and pregnant women will be excluded from inoculation. When we exclude these groups, a total of 43.5 million people will be subject to the COVID-19 vaccination--84% of the total population.

As of midnight this day, the newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 reached 416 cases. The number remained below 500 for two consecutive days following the previous day (448 cases). Since the number of tests on the weekend falls to nearly a half of the number on weekdays, this probably affected the slight decrease. The proportion of positive cases among the total number of COVID-19 tests more than doubled compared with the previous day.

Son Young-rae, director of social strategy at the Central Disaster Management Headquarters said, “We will observe this week’s situation and review adjustments to the distancing level.”