The produced vaccines will be supplied domestically.
Photo: IANS
South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Tuesday the government secured additional Covid-19 vaccines for 23 million people, raising the total secured volume to doses for 79 million people.
Chung told an interagency meeting for Covid-19 response that the country will receive vaccine doses for 20 million people from the US pharmaceutical firm Novavax and additional doses for 3 million people from the US drugmaker Pfizer, respectively, Xinhua news agency reported.
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South Korea had already secured Covid-19 vaccines for 56 million people, including doses for 10 million each from Pfizer and AstraZeneca, 20 million from Moderna, 6 million from Janssen and 10 million from the COVAX facility led by the World Health Organization (WHO).
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Chung said the contract with Novavax was more significant as vaccines from the US company will be manufactured in local factories through the transfer of technology to a South Korean drugmaker.
He noted that it will play a big role in speeding up the development of homegrown Covid-19 vaccines.
The Novavax vaccines will be manufactured in the vaccine production plant of SK Bioscience, a pharmaceutical unit of South Korea’s third-biggest conglomerate SK Group.
The produced vaccines will be supplied domestically.
South Korea separately signed a consignment manufacturing agreement with AstraZeneca last year.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in vowed to offer Covid-19 vaccines to all of the country’s 52 million population free of charge, aiming to almost completely form a herd immunity no later than November.
In the latest tally, the country reported 457 more cases of Covid-19 for the past 24 hours, lifting the total number of infections to 84,325. The daily caseload rose above 400 in four days.
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