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Shipments of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrive at a virus research center in Belgrade, Serbia, on Dec. 22. (Yonhap News)

Blindsided by the third wave of COVID-19, the South Korean government took its time in negotiations for securing vaccines. This has made Koreans more anxious about when an ample supply of vaccines will arrive.

Amid escalating criticism, the government has vigorously defended itself by arguing that verifying vaccine safety is the top priority. But infectious disease experts counter that vaccine safety should be emphasized at the time of inoculation, not at the time of acquisition, and criticize the government for rushing to duck responsibility for its failure to secure a supply of vaccines more quickly.

“As a disease control authority, I have some serious concerns about the recent formation of a spirit of competition in our society, as if Koreans need to be the first people in the world to be inoculated,” said Son Young-rae, director of strategy and planning at Korea’s Central Disaster Management Headquarters (CDMH), in the daily briefing on Dec. 23.

“The process for developing COVID-19 vaccines was truncated, and [verifying] safety is important. I think that we’re extremely fortunate to have a few months to observe what problems might occur in the countries that are inoculating their populations first,” Son added.

But Son’s argument that it’s okay for inoculation to be delayed sidesteps growing doubts about when exactly vaccines will be distributed to the Korean population.

Earlier, the South Korean government announced that it had secured enough vaccines to inoculate 44 million people through agreements with pharmaceutical firms AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Janssen and with the COVAX Facility, an international body arranging joint purchases of vaccines. But AstraZeneca is the only company with which Korean has finalized a contract, as well as the only country that has specifically committed to begin supplying its vaccine in February and March 2021.

Seoul has signed purchase agreements with Pfizer and Janssen and plans to sign one with Moderna in January, but says it can’t disclose the expected date of distribution because of secrecy agreements with those companies. For the same reason, officials have declined to comment about reports suggesting that, while AstraZeneca has agreed to provide enough vaccines for 10 million people, only 1.5 million doses (enough for 750,000 people) will actually be distributed in February and March.

On Dec. 24, the government announced that it had signed a contract for 16 million doses from Janssen and Pfizer.

Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun elaborated, “We secured 6 million doses of the Janssen vaccine, 2 million more than originally planned, and 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine.”

The government plans to begin administering the Janssen vaccines in the second quarter of 2021, while shipments of the Pfizer vaccine are expected to arrive in the third quarter.

Despite this situation, the government has attempted to sidestep controversy by simply reiterating how different South Korea’s situation is from that of the US and Europe. Son said the US and other countries “are basically in a situation where they don’t really have any other disease control strategies besides vaccines, so they’ve been putting more or less all they have into vaccines.”

“It’s somewhat inappropriate for us to take lessons from those countries,” he added.

But with no way of knowing when the current third wave will reach its peak, it will be difficult for the government to calm the public’s fears simply by emphasizing the importance of “safety verification.”

“To date, no side effects serious enough to warrant stopping the vaccination process have been reported overseas,” observed Choi Won-seok, a professor of infectious disease at Korea University Ansan Hospital.

“While safety is obviously an important issue, that’s a matter that determines the administration time frame, not the acquisition time frame,” he added. “We should definitely approach the acquisition of vaccines more aggressively.”

Choi also noted that “critics of the administration seem to be taking issue with the AstraZeneca vaccine, while the government and ruling party have been taking issue with the safety of the other pharmaceutical companies’ vaccines.”

“If this ‘vaccine war’ leads to diminished trust in safety, we could end up with a situation of people avoiding certain vaccines, which means we end up not being able to use all of the vaccines we worked so hard to get,” he predicted.

Some have suggested that the government could present a more aggressive plan for vaccine acquisition. Eom Joong-sik, a professor of infectious disease at Gachon University Gil Medical, suggested, “Future vaccine negotiations will be easier if the state streamlines its internal decision-making process, establishes legal and institutional measures, and secures a proper budget beforehand, which would allow faster purchase agreements for vaccines under development.”

By Choi Ha-yan, staff reporter

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