| An elderly citizen receives a shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Dongjak District, Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap |
By Jun Ji-hye
Korea is lagging behind some other countries in COVID-19 vaccinations apparently due to its failure to preemptively secure vaccines, in addition to the comparatively low competitiveness of domestic pharmaceutical companies in new medicine development.
According to the latest data collated by the University of Oxford-based Our World in Data, the government has administered vaccines to 1.66 percent of the Korean population as of March 30, a little over a month after the country's vaccination program began Feb. 26.
This ranked Korea 111th in the world with regard to the share of people having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccination rate in the United Kingdom, which was the first in the world to begin COVID-19 vaccinations Dec. 8, stood at 45.19 percent, while that of the United States was tallied at 28.72 percent.
Korea's rate was lower than those of many other Asian countries, such as Singapore with 16.12 percent and India with 3.91 percent.
The global average inoculation rate stood at 7.24 percent.
The government was originally planning to administer vaccines to 11.5 million people during the April-June period in a bid to speed up the program, but the prospects for this don't seem very hopeful, due to intensifying competition between countries to secure the vaccines amid supply shortages.
India, a major supplier of the AstraZeneca vaccine, has placed a temporary hold on all exports of the vaccine to meet domestic demand amid increasing infections there. This is posing setbacks to many other nations' programs, according to foreign news reports.
The European Union has also toughened rules on exports, requiring companies to seek authorization before exporting vaccines, as part of measures to check if companies are respecting their supply commitments with the EU.
Amid growing “vaccine nationalism” around the world, Korea, which failed to preemptively secure an adequate supply in the first place, is struggling to keep up with its initial plan.
Yang Dong-gyo, a government official in charge of the vaccination program, said Thursday that the country will receive AstraZeneca vaccines via the COVAX Facility, the World Health Organization-led global vaccine distribution project, this Saturday. But the amount has been reduced to shots for 216,000 people from for 345,000.
The delivery of vaccines, which had been originally scheduled to depart from the Netherlands on Wednesday, has been pushed back to the third week of April and then changed again to this Saturday, showing that the vaccine supply situation around the world is very unstable.
Adding to concerns is that the authorities here are failing to advise when additional AstraZeneca vaccines for 700,000 people as well as Johnson & Johnson's Janssen, Moderna and Novavax vaccines will arrive.
Experts said the ongoing problem was not a huge surprise, given that some developed countries have dominated the global vaccine market.
“This was why countries like Israel and Singapore, which have no relevant technologies, purchased vaccines at high prices, preemptively,” said Kim Woo-joo, a professor of infectious diseases at Korea University.
Park In-sook, a professor emeritus at Asan Medical Center and a former lawmaker of the Saenuri Party, a predecessor of the main opposition People Power Party, also wrote on Facebook: “This is the worst-case scenario, about which health experts expressed concerns. It will be difficult for us to end the COVID-19 pandemic here within the year.”
Questions have also been raised over why Korea has been unable to develop vaccines.
Song Si-young, a professor of Yonsei University College of Medicine, said this was not a surprise either, considering the low competitiveness of domestic pharmaceutical companies.
“Global pharmaceutical companies have made large profits following their development of vaccines in only about one to two years, whereas domestic firms have made no particular achievements since their announcement of the beginning of the clinical trials,” he said.
“In general, it takes 10 to 15 years to develop new medicine, with less than a 1 percent probability of success. Global pharmaceutical companies could develop vaccines in about a year as they worked hard to conduct basic research for over 20 years.”
He said more investment should made in the R&D sector by domestic drugmakers for the future of the industry here.