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 in a briefing Thursday.
Under the contract, South Korea will import doses of Janssen for 6 million people, 2 million more than announced at the beginning of December. Vaccination with Janssen’s 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 doing everything possible to get the Pfizer vaccine in the second quarter of next year.
Previously, South Korea announced it had signed a contract with vaccine developer AstraZeneca to import vaccines for 10 million people from the first quarter of 2021. The government said it would also import vaccine doses for 10 million people from Moderna 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 registered 955 local and 30 imported Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, including 644 from the Seoul metropolitan area, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said in a press release on Thursday. Another 17 deaths were reported Wednesday.
The latest figures bring the total number of cases since the start of the pandemic to 53,533, including 756 deaths.