South Korea finds no link between deaths and coronavirus vaccine

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea said Monday it had found no link between the coronavirus vaccine and several recent deaths, as it tested nearly 100,000 foreign workers after clusters appeared in dormitories.

Health officials had investigated the deaths of eight people with underlying conditions who had side effects after receiving AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, but said they found no evidence that the shots played a role.

“We tentatively concluded that it was difficult to establish a link between their post-vaccination adverse reaction and their deaths,” Jeong Eun-kyeong, director of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), told a briefing.

South Korea began vaccinating residents and workers in nursing homes and other at-risk individuals in late February, with 316,865 people getting their first injections on Sunday.

South Koreans 65 or older did not receive AstraZeneca vaccine after health regulators concluded that more data was needed to confirm its effectiveness in that age group.

But on Monday, Jeong said a panel of experts had now recommended giving the shot to older people and that the KDCA would soon make a final decision.

COMMON HOUSING

Several outbreaks in manufacturing and other industrial workplaces prompted authorities to inspect 12,000 work sites with international workers, while several local governments ordered testing of foreign workers in the coming days.

“Their work environment and communal housing increase the risk of infection, but it is difficult to find patients early because of their limited access to medical devices and testing, and the issue of illegal residence,” Jeong said.

Gyeonggi province ordered about 85,000 foreign workers to be tested in the next two weeks, Deputy Governor for Administrative Affairs Lee Yong-chul told a briefing.

At least 151 foreign residents in the town of Dongducheon in Gyeonggi recently tested positive, but the cause of the outbreak is still unclear.

In Namyangju, another city in Gyeonggi, at least 124 foreigners had tested positive after an outbreak at a plastics factory.

In another central province, the industrial cities of Eumseong and Jincheon also had approximately 4,500 and 5,000 foreign residents tested, respectively, after group infections emerged from a glass factory and a food processing plant.

Working conditions for migrant workers in South Korea were re-examined after a woman from Cambodia was found dead in a greenhouse in freezing winter temperatures late last year.

The deaths of hundreds of mostly Thai undocumented migrant workers in South Korea prompted the United Nations to investigate the fate of migrants last year.

According to a report by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the number of Thai workers’ fatalities in 2020 reached an all-time high – 122 as of mid-December.