Concerns growing over COVID-19 vaccination errors

By Lee Hyo-jin

As Korea's vaccination drive against COVID-19 gathers pace, a number of vaccine-related errors have been reported nationwide, prompting concern among people waiting their turn to be inoculated.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said 105 vaccine administration errors have been reported out of the 14.79 million that had been given as of Sunday.

Of these, 90 cases were vaccinating ineligible recipients ― the most common error ― such as giving the AstraZeneca dose to people under the age of 30. Its use for people under the age 30 has been banned by the government due to possible side effects related to blood clotting.

Ten others involved incorrect intervals between administering the two doses, giving the second one earlier than the recommended time. In the remaining cases, five people were given overdoses of the vaccine.

These five were reported at a hospital in Buan County in North Jeolla Province, where medical workers inadvertently administered five to six times the recommended dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to five men in their 30s. One of them suffered a high fever of over 40 degrees Celsius, while the others did not have any serious side effects.

There also have been errors not included in the KDCA data yet as it is currently conducting further investigations.

Forty people were given only a half dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine at a medical institution in Namdong District, Incheon, the health authority noted.

In a military hospital in Daegu, six soldiers were inoculated with saline water with only a small amount of the Pfizer vaccine in the syringe, after medical staff extracted the vaccine from an almost empty vial.

As the hospital was not able to identify the six who were incorrectly inoculated, the Armed Forces Medical Command has decided to offer re-vaccinations to 21 soldiers who were inoculated in the hospital at the same time.

Following such errors, the KDCA said it will ask medical institutions to be more precise, while considering imposing penalties on hospitals that fail to follow vaccination instructions.

“In the event of an error, the medical institution must immediately report it to the public health center. We will consider cancelling consignment contracts for vaccinations in cases where there is a recurrence,” said KDCA Commissioner Jeong Eun-kyoung.

Jeong added that the government will launch a consultative group with medical personnel from the private sector to come up with measures to prevent errors from recurring.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Welfare announced that over 13 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine as of Tuesday afternoon, fulfilling the government's goal of vaccinating this number by the end of June early.

In line with the smooth vaccine rollout, the health ministry said it will announce a revised version of social distancing guidelines, Sunday, which will be put into effect starting July 7.

On Tuesday, the KDCA reported 374 more COVID-19 infections, including 347 local cases, raising the total caseload to 148,647.