Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Gov't urges vulnerable to get flu shot, despite lingering risks
A man receives a seasonal flu shot at a hospital in Seoul, Friday. / Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Health authorities are continuing to urge children, senior citizens and other vulnerable people to get vaccinated for influenza, even though 48 people have died after receiving the flu shot. Health authorities say there are no direct causalities between the deaths and vaccinations.
“In Korea, about 3,000 people die every year from the flu and its complications,” Jung Eun-kyeong, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), said during a regular briefing at the government complex in Sejong.
Jung stressed that about 1,500 people aged 65 and over died within a week after being vaccinated during last year's free flu vaccination program.
Introducing last year's statistics, the commissioner said, “The seasonal flu is also a serious infectious disease just as COVID-19 infection is. Regardless of whether the cause of death is linked to vaccination, the statistics are about the number of deaths after vaccination.”
She added, “It can be seen as the number of deaths that are not related to vaccination.”
According to the KDCA, the number of deaths from flu vaccines was 48 as of 1 p.m., Saturday, up 12 from 36 the previous day. However, no link between the deaths and vaccinations has been validated yet.
By age, 23 people were in their 70s, followed by 18 in their 80s and older, five under 60 and two in their 60s.
By region, Seoul and South Gyeongsang Province have the most deaths with six each, followed by Daegu and North Jeolla and South Jeolla provinces with five respectively, Gyeonggi and North Gyeongsang provinces with four each, South Chungcheong Province with three, Busan, Incheon, Daejeon and Gangwon Province with two respectively, and Gwangju and Jeju with one each.
The agency stressed that experts have so far comprehensively reviewed the results of autopsy and epidemiological investigations of 26 deaths after vaccinations, and found that the possibility of a link between vaccination and death was low.
Accordingly, the free seasonal vaccination program will continue without interruption, but adverse reactions after vaccination will be promptly investigated and the results will be disclosed.
In particular, the KDCA explained that the need for vaccination has increased because there is a risk of simultaneous prevalence of COVID-19 and the seasonal flu this year.
With the peak incubation period for coronavirus infections, which occurred during two major holidays ― Hangeul Day and Chuseok holiday ― passing earlier this month, the quarantine authorities are back at the starting line and prepared for a possible “twindemic” ― surging COVID-19 cases and a severe flu season.
Because there are no holidays that last more than three days until the end of the year, some say the twindemic in winter can be prevented only when the COVID-19 response is prompt and thorough during this period.
The number of daily new cases has been rising steadily since the holidays, as the daily average number in Korea stood at 68.7 over the past two weeks from Oct. 11 to 24.
The average number of daily new cases stood at 59.4 in the two weeks between Sept. 27 and Oct. 10, the previous two weeks. However, no large outbreaks occurred as seen in mid-August, when daily new cases remained in triple digits for a while.
According to the KDCA, the nation added 61 cases including 50 locally transmitted cases for Saturday, raising the total caseload to 25,836. The country has been going through ups and downs in the number of the daily new cases since quarantine authorities eased the social distancing level on Oct. 12.
Among the newly identified locally transmitted cases, 17 were detected in Seoul and 27 cases in Gyeonggi Province. No additional deaths were reported, keeping the total at 457. The fatality rate reached 1.77 percent.