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Coronavirus pandemic
AsiaEast Asia

Coronavirus: South Korea faces heat over slow vaccine roll-out as Covax gamble backfires

  • Delayed supply from the global vaccine-sharing scheme has raised concerns about the country’s aim to immunise 12 million people by June
  • Elsewhere, Malaysia and China have agreed in principal to mutually recognise their vaccination digital certificates

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A South Korean woman receives her first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in Seoul. Photo: Reuters
Agencies

South Korean authorities are facing a backlash for relying on global vaccine-sharing scheme Covax for a bulk of its Covid-19 shots as shipment delays threaten to slow the country’s inoculation programme.

Once praised by the World Health Organization for its decision to procure vaccines through the global scheme, South Korea is now facing criticism at home as the government scrambles to meet the supply shortfall.
South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are among countries to be hit by shipment delays to vaccines they have been promised following export curbs by manufacturer India.

In February, South Korea slashed its first quarter vaccination target from 1.3 million people to just 750,000 due to adjustments in the supply timetable of the 2.6 million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine from Covax.

The latest Covax shipment disruption announced earlier this week – that it would only receive 432,000 doses instead of 690,000 and delivery would be delayed to around the third week of April – is the second time that South Korea’s vaccine roll-out has been hit by delayed supply from the scheme.

“The government should no longer cause public anxiety with the vaccines,” Lee Yong-ho, an independent lawmaker who sits on parliament’s health and welfare committee, said.

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