| A medical worker prepares to COVID-19 vaccine dose at a public health facility in Yongsan District, Seoul, Monday. Yonhap |
By Bahk Eun-ji
A growing number of people are shunning COVID-19 vaccinations here following several reports of serious adverse effects reported.
Health experts say the government needs to more actively guarantee compensation or other supports to those experiencing such effects even though no direct correlation between their symptoms and the inoculation has been found, adding this will help encourage people to get vaccinated.
Since the nation started inoculation on Feb. 26, 14 people have posted petitions on the Cheong Wa Dae website calling for government help to deal with serious adverse reactions their family members suffered after receiving the vaccinations.
Their reported symptoms are mostly neurological, such as acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, paralysis of limbs and cerebral hemorrhaging. Such adverse side-effects were reported to have occurred to people after they received the AstraZeneca vaccine.
According to a petition posted by the husband of a 45-year-old nursing assistant who was hospitalized with a serious neurological disorder, the medical expenses reach 4 million won ($3,554) a week.
“It's not an amount of money that regular people can afford,” he said. Soon after her case was made public, President Moon Jae-in ordered health authorities review support measures for her.
However, in most such cases, health authorities are reluctant to provide compensation or financial support for treatment, saying no correlation has been clearly proven. They are concerned that compensation could spread distrust of vaccination among the public.
In this situation, the number of people willing to get vaccinated has dropped compared with in March.
According to a survey conducted by Hankook Research at the request of the government on 1,000 adults for three days from April 27, 61.4 percent said they were willing to receive the vaccine, down from 68 percent a month earlier. During the same period, those saying they would not get the vaccine increased from 12.9 percent to 19.6 percent.
Among those who are reluctant to receive the vaccine, 84.1 percent cited concerns about adverse effects, 66.8 percent said they do not trust the effectiveness of the vaccines and 44.8 percent said it is because they are given no choice over the vaccines of specific manufacturers.
In order to allay the public anxiety over vaccination, experts pointed out that even though the causal relationship between vaccination and adverse reactions is still unclear, practical support measures such as guaranteed coverage of treatment costs should come first to reduce public anxiety.
“The government needs to find ways to provide practical help rather than saying it is going to compensate the patients and families if the correlation is proven. Thus, offering medical expenses first before conducting the investigation will be one of the ways to reassure the public,” said Chung Jae-hoon, a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon University.
Baek Soon-young, an emeritus professor at the college of medicine of the Catholic University, also underlined the need for the government's prompt responses and disclosure of information.
“As the public trust in the vaccine has fallen, more people are unwilling to get the shots. The government should provide compensation unless there is 100 percent no correlation between the vaccine and side effects,” Baek said.