South Korea Acting Prime Minister Says Vaccinations Will Proceed On Schedule

South Korea is now accelerating its COVID-19 vaccine campaign with additional vaccine doses the country recently secured. Acting Prime Minister Hong Nam-ki said on Monday that a shortage of COVID-19 vaccine supply would make it harder for the country to achieve herd immunity by November 2021.

Hong Nam-ki also expressed in his public message that herd immunity may be achieved even earlier and the government is prepared for sudden demand for more vaccine doses in the future. He made it clear that the country has secured enough shots to protect South Korea from the COVID-19 pandemic. He also expressed that the news of a so-called vaccine drought is not true, and everyone is advised to cooperate and only share news sources from reliable media platforms to prevent the spread of excessive public anxiety and fake news.

The South Korean government is currently concentrating its efforts on virus response, including the security of supplying enough vaccines to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Through careful and comprehensive efforts, the government is very confident in achieving this.

South Korea recently made another deal with pharmaceutical company Pfizer to purchase enough COVID-19 vaccines for 20 million people. This also includes the latest deal in which the government has also signed a deal to purchase COVID-19 vaccines for 99 million people. This is near double the country's current total population.

"This additional deal with Pfizer has helped us establish grounds to advance our target date for herd immunity, as well as preparations for additional demand in the future from inoculation for those under 18 and booster shots in fighting virus variants.", Hong Nam-ki said.

Over the recent weeks, the government was heavily criticized due to the slow pace of its COVID-19 vaccination program. This on top of being late on purchasing vaccines from various foreign pharmaceutical companies.