Korea to start vaccinating pregnant women, younger children next month
South Korea is poised to begin administering COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant women and younger children starting next month as part of its expanding vaccination campaign.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) will announce the list of fourth-quarter vaccine recipients next Monday, part of the government's efforts to achieve nationwide herd immunity by November.
The country's vaccination campaign started Feb. 26 with some vulnerable groups and front-line medical workers being prioritized.
A total of 37.13 million people have received their first shots of a COVID-19 vaccine, accounting for 72.3 percent of the country's population, while those who are fully vaccinated had reached 22.58 million, accounting for 44 percent, as of Friday.
Those who have been excluded from the inoculation program, including pregnant women and teenagers aged between 12 and 17, are scheduled to receive their first doses in the fourth quarter.
The plan also reportedly includes providing booster shots for at risk people to deal with the more contagious Delta variant, the main culprit behind the current fourth wave of the outbreak.
Priority groups, including the elderly and healthcare workers who received their first dose in February, are likely to receive booster shots first.
South Korea has secured enough shots to fully vaccinate 99 million people with vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson's Janssen.
On Thursday, the country's daily new coronavirus cases reached an all-time high of 2,434, breaking the previous record of 2,221 from Aug. 10, as mass migrations during the Chuseok holiday caused a rapid spread of the virus nationwide.
The KDCA had expected the surge in daily virus cases after millions of South Koreans travelled to their hometowns during Chuseok, the Korean autumn festival, which ran from Monday to Wednesday. (Yonhap)