There Were Cases Of Death Once, South Korea Continues To Use The AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine For The Elderly

JAKARTA - South Korea will continue to vaccinate COVID-19 for people aged 65 years and over or the elderly (seniors), using the AstraZeneca vaccine.

This was said by Prime Minister Chung Sye-Kyun said at a government meeting on Thursday, March 11 local time.

South Korea started a COVID-19 vaccination program in the last week of February, starting with the elderly and health workers. But it excludes more than 370.000 people over the age of 65 in nursing homes, citing a lack of clinical trial data in that age group.

"The Vaccination has been postponed for those aged 65 years and over due to lack of evidence to determine the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but recently, data to prove its efficacy for the elderly have been released in the UK", said Prime Minister Chung, reported by Reuters.

"The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for an additional 7 million people will be launched from the last week of May", he added.

World data from the UK shows, the AstraZeneca and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines are more than 80 percent effective in preventing hospitalization for the elderly over the age of 80 years old after one injection.

South Korean health authorities adjusted the interval between the starting dose and the booster dose to 10 weeks, from the current eight weeks in line with World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations, the Korea Agency for Disease Control and Prevention (KDCA) said in a statement.

KDCA says 500.635 people have received the first dose of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

It is known that South Korea announced that they did not find a link between the AstraZeneca vaccine, and a number of cases of death after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine injection.

"We tentatively conclude that we cannot establish a relationship between adverse reactions after the vaccine and the death of the vaccine recipient", said KDCA Director Jeong Eun-kyeong.

As previously reported, two elderly residents of a nursing home in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, in Goyang and Pyeongtaek to be precise, died after receiving the first injection of AstraZeneca vaccine, said KDCA on March 3.

The man at the Goyang nursing home was in his 50s, he showed signs of a heart attack and had difficulty in breathing 11 hours after being vaccinated on Tuesday morning. He received first aid on site but died the next day of heart failure. He has several congenital diseases, heart problems, diabetes, and stroke.

Meanwhile, a man in Pyongtaek, 63 years old, is known to have cerebrovascular disease. He died four days after receiving his first shot of the vaccine on Saturday afternoon last week. He started showing adverse reactions including high fever and body aches the next day.

He was prescribed painkillers and fever relievers but was transferred to the public hospital Tuesday afternoon because his condition had worsened. The man died on Wednesday morning at around 10 a.m., showing additional symptoms of sepsis and pneumonia.

"As the epidemiological investigations are currently underway, we will thoroughly review their medical records to see the link between deaths and vaccinations", said KDCA Director Jeong Eun-kyeong.