Many nations in the Asia-Pacific region are launching the first vaccines for COVID-19 this week.
Here is a look at the main developments:
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea’s leading infectious disease experts have warned that vaccines will not end the disease quickly and called for continued vigilance in social detachment and wearing masks as the country prepares to deliver its first vaccines on Friday.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korean Disease Prevention and Control Agency, said on Wednesday that it would take “a considerably long time” before the mass vaccination campaign brought the virus under control.
The country plans to vaccinate more than 70% of the population by November. But a safe return to a life without masks is highly unlikely this year, considering several factors, including the increasing spread of variants of the virus, said Choi Won Suk, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Korea’s Ansan Hospital.
“We are concerned that people will let their guard down when vaccination starts, triggering another massive wave of the virus,” said Jeong.
Jeong spoke as South Korea began shipping the first vaccines launched from a production line in the southern city of Andong, where local pharmaceutical company SK Bioscience is manufacturing vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford.
The country will start vaccination on Friday from residents and staff at long-term care facilities.
Separately, some 55,000 doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals who treat patients with COVID-19 will begin receiving injections developed by Pfizer and BioNTech on Saturday.
AUSTRALIA
Two elderly people received higher than prescribed doses of the Pfizer vaccine, Australia’s health minister said on Wednesday.
The 88-year-old man and the 94-year-old woman are being monitored and the doctor who administered the injections has been removed from the vaccination program, said Health Minister Greg Hunt.
The error occurred at the Espírito Santo elderly care home in the Carseldine suburb of Brisbane on Tuesday, a day after the vaccine began to be distributed in Australia, Hunt said.
“Both patients are being monitored and show no sign of an adverse reaction,” said Hunt. He did not say how much more than the prescribed dose was injected.
Lincoln Hopper, chief executive of St. Vincent’s Care Services, who owns the house, said he was “very concerned” about the well-being of residents. The woman remained at home while the man was admitted to the hospital, Hopper said.
“This incident was very distressing for us, our residents and their families and it is also very worrying,” said Hopper. “This made us question whether some of the doctors in charge of administering the vaccine have received the appropriate training.”
Hunt later revealed that the doctor who administered the overdoses had not completed the online training that all health professionals involved in the program are required to perform.
Hunt apologized for telling Parliament that the doctor had been trained. He said he asked the Ministry of Health to act against the doctor and the company he works for.
THAILAND
Thailand on Wednesday received the first 200,000 doses of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine.
Another 117,000 doses of AstraZeneca are expected on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha attended a ceremony with the deputy head of the Chinese embassy mission to receive vaccines at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport.
Thailand ordered a total of 2 million doses from China.
Later this year, local manufacturer Siam Bioscience will supply 200 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to the region, of which 26 million will go to Thailand. Thai officials said they had secured an additional deal with AstraZeneca for a total of 61 million doses.
Many critics and opposition parties criticized the government’s procurement plans as too slow and inadequate.
Thailand, whose economy depends on tourism income, plans to inject 10 million doses a month starting in June and plans to inoculate at least half of the population by the end of the year.
MALAYSIA
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin received Malaysia’s first COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, at the start of the inoculation campaign.
“I felt absolutely nothing. It was all over before I knew it, like a normal injection. Don’t worry, come anytime, ”he said in a ceremony broadcast live.
Director-General for Health Noor Hisham Abdullah was also one of the first to be vaccinated.
Malaysia, which has signed agreements with several vaccine suppliers, including Pfizer and AstroZeneca, plans to vaccinate up to 80% per cent of its 32 million inhabitants next year.
More than half a million health and frontline professionals will be given priority in the first phase.
CHINA
Chinese regulators are looking at two more potential COVID-19 vaccines, one from state-owned Sinopharm and the other from a private company, CanSino.
Both companies said their vaccine candidates were submitted to regulators this week for approval.
China has already approved two vaccines it is using in a mass immunization campaign. One of them is also from Sinopharm, but it was developed by its subsidiary in Beijing.
Sinopharm said its vaccine candidate is 72.51% effective. Both Sinopharm shots have inactivated viruses, a traditional technology in which a live virus is killed and then purified. The inactivated virus then triggers an immune response.
The CanSino vaccine is a single dose that depends on a harmless virus from the common cold, called adenovirus, to deliver the virus’s spike gene to the body. The body then produces the peak proteins and then generates an immune response. The technology is similar to vaccines from Astrazeneca and Johnson & Johnson, which depend on different adenoviruses.
CanSino said his vaccine candidate is 65.28% effective.
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