Description:
South Korea's Prime Minister has laid out more details about the vaccinations
that will start in South Korea on Friday.
Transcription:
South Korea's Prime Minister has laid out more details about the vaccinations
that will start in South Korea on Friday. First will be the jab from AstraZeneca,
as announced previously. And Pfizer's vaccine will be rolled out starting the
very next day. Lee Kyung-eun has more.
Lee Kyung-eun: It's a big week
for South Korea,... as the country will begin its first rounds of COVID-19
vaccinations. The AstraZeneca vaccine will be rolled out, starting at 9 AM
on Friday,... for staff members and patients under the age of 65 at nursing
hospitals and related facilities. From Wednesday to Sunday, SK Bioscience,
which manufactures the AZ vaccine in the country, will transport the batches
to a storage center in Icheon, Gyeonggi-do Province. Those batches will be
enough to inoculate some 750-thousand people. From there, the vaccines
will be distributed to nursing hospitals and public health centers nationwide.
Nursing hospitals will carry out inoculations on their own. But public health
centers will set up vaccination centers for care homes that do not have the
infrastructure to do that. On the same day, some 117-thousand doses of
the Pfizer vaccine will arrive in the country from the global vaccine supply
scheme COVAX. And they will be distributed starting on Saturday,...
to inoculate 55-thousand front-line medical workers. The first batch will be
sent to the vaccination center in Seoul's National Medical Center,...then to
other state-run medical centers across the country. Doctors and nurses
will need to visit those sites to get their shots. Covid hospitals with more
than one-hundred-20 staff needing vaccinations will carry out the inoculations
on-site,... to prevent a staff shortage. "Because the Pfizer vaccine requires
a sub-zero cold chain system, national and regional vaccination centers will
help train staff in those hospitals who will carry out the vaccinations on their
own." The Food and Drug Safety Ministry previously granted the Pfizer vaccine
emergency import approval. But it will hold its first consultative meeting with an
independent advisory panel on Monday. It aims to give it an official approval
like AstraZeneca's by the first week of March. Lee Kyung-eun, Arirang News.
Questions:
1. When will Korea receive COVID-19 vaccine?
2. Which companies will provide vaccination supply?
3. Who will be receiving the vaccines first?