Gov't urged to establish law on pre-purchasing of vaccines

Medical workers collect specimens from people for COVID-19 tests at a temporary testing center in front of Seoul Station, Friday. Yonhap

By Bahk Eun-ji

Infectious disease experts urged Korea to pass a bill allowing for the pre-purchase of vaccines before they are licensed, saying the lack of laws has resulted in the country's relatively late purchase of COVID-19 vaccines and the resulting insufficient amount of vaccines.

The government said, Friday, it plans to start offering vaccines to people early next year, by pushing to sign vaccine procurement contracts with Janssen and Pfizer later this month and inking another deal with Moderna next month, in addition to the deal already signed with AstraZeneca. It said it has secured early access to the vaccines developed by the four pharmaceutical companies and from a global vaccine project to secure enough vaccines for 44 million people.

The scheme has brought some criticism that Korea's vaccine purchases have come late, as the United Kingdom and the United Nations have started vaccinations already and some 30 countries are expected to start doing so before the end of this year.

But experts said there is no law or budget system to pre-purchase vaccines before they are licensed, and thus the health authorities couldn't purchase vaccines from global pharmaceutical companies in advance.

“To make an advance purchase, a huge amount of money must be paid (to the companies before the vaccine development is finished). However, as Korea does not have such a legal or budget system that allows for the advance purchase of vaccines before they are licensed, it was not possible to do,” said Jacob Lee, professor at the Infectious Disease Department of Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital.

Lee also said the National Assembly should have talked about this legislative loophole to improve it, but it seems the political community is only complaining about the late purchase of the vaccines while ignoring the key issues.

“Since 2009, many experts have insisted that legal grounds for pre-purchasing should be prepared, but the government and the Assembly have not done anything,” he said.

In regard to the cautious approach to pre-purchasing vaccines while other countries were moving ahead to grant emergency use approval for the vaccines, the government has been saying it would not hurry but rather observe potential side effects.

“If we had done it (the pre-purchase) quickly, it would have been possible in July. However, in order to select a safer and more effective vaccine, we requested clinical data from the manufacturers. After reviewing these, we proceeded to make a selection,” a heath official said during a recent briefing.

“Deaths during clinical trials were also carefully examined. We went through a meticulous review and procedure to select a safe and effective vaccine.”

In regard to the safety issue, Kim Woo-joo, a professor at Korea University Guro Hospital, said there is a lot of uncertainty as vaccine development normally takes more than 10 years.

“Although good results are obtained in clinical trials, serious side effects can occur if administered to many people. Because of these kinds of uncertainties, other countries such as the United States are securing vaccines equivalent to two to three times the number of citizens through various channels,” Kim said.

Epidemiologists also pointed out that health officials may have hesitated to actively push ahead with the vaccine purchase, based on past experience with the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009. At that time, public officials who increased the amount of vaccines to be purchased were later held responsible for wasting the budget when the situation quickly calmed down and many unused vaccine doses remained.