South Korea has signed contracts with Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson’s pharmaceutical company Janssen to import Covid-19 vaccines, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Thursday.
Under the contract, South Korea will import doses for 6 million people from Janssen, 2 million more than announced in early December. Vaccination with Janssen doses will begin in the second quarter of 2021, Chung added.
South Korea will also import vaccine doses for 10 million people from Pfizer in the third quarter of 2021, Chung said. Chung added that the government is making every effort to introduce the Pfizer vaccine in the second quarter of next year.
Earlier, South Korea announced that it had signed a contract with vaccine developer AstraZeneca to import vaccines for 10 million people as of the first quarter of 2021. The government said it would also import vaccine doses for 10 million people. Modern people and additional doses for 10 million people through Covax Facility.
About 52 million people live in South Korea.
The situation in South Korea: The East Asian country on Wednesday recorded 955 local cases and 30 imported from Covid-19, of which 644 came from the Seoul metropolitan area, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported on Thursday. An additional 17 deaths were reported on Wednesday.
The latest figures bring the total number of cases since the start of the pandemic to 53,533, including 756 deaths.