Out of the 1 million Janssen Covid-19 vaccines provided by the U.S. government, 800,000 shots were booked out in about 15 hours of receiving reservations, reflecting young people’s wishes for quick immunization.
"On midnight Monday, we began to receive a reservation for the Janssen vaccines and closed the booking for 800,000 shots for the first day at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday,” the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDA) said. “It took only 15-and-a-half hours.”
The KCDA said it put about 200,000 shots aside to prepare for situations where they have to send more vaccine vials than reserved to hospitals.
“It is due to technical consideration. A vial of Janssen vaccine injects up to five people, and medical institutions can open a vial if they have secured at least two reservations,” a KDCA official said. “For instance, we have to send vaccines for 40 people to hospitals that received bookings from 37 people.”
The KCDA began accepting an additional 100,000 reservations an hour after the initial closure after confirming the number of reservations and the actual amount of vaccines set for delivery. About 3.7 million people can make reservations for Janssen's vaccine, including reservists, members of the civil defense force, and people related to defense and diplomacy aged 30 to 60.
Health officials will also receive reservations from those under 30 who have no vaccination options, including essential workers -- policemen, firefighters, and coast guards -- chronic kidney disease patients, and employees working at vulnerable facilities, from next Monday. They will be inoculated by Pfizer's vaccine.
Korea has vaccinated 5,791,503 people – 3,557,906 with the AstraZeneca vaccine and 2,233,597 with Pfizer's vaccine – up a drastic 412,599 from the previous day. The figure accounts for 11.3 percent of the country's population.
The government eased its social distancing guidelines for vaccinated people on Tuesday. Under the new regulation, those who have received at least one shot of the Covid-19 vaccine will be partly exempt from the current distancing guidelines of limiting the size of family gatherings to eight members.
To incentivize more citizens to receive the vaccine, the government also plans to allow citizens who have received the first jab of the vaccine to take their masks off outdoors starting in July.
On Tuesday, Korea confirmed 459 new cases, including 449 local infections, raising the cumulative caseload to 140,799
However, authorities expressed concerns regarding the continuous spread of variant cases.
According to quarantine officials, the nation has confirmed 202 more cases of Covid-19 variants, including 168 variant transmissions, from May 23 to 29. The total number of Covid-19 variant cases reported here has reached 1,592 as of Saturday last week.
Of the newly confirmed variant cases, 170 cases were variants from the U.K., followed by 24 Indian and eight South African variant cases. There was no additional case of the virus strain from Brazil.
Four more people died of the Covid-19, raising the death toll to 1,963 with a fatality rate of 1.39 percent. A total of 131,463 people have returned to their daily life after complete recovery, up 640 from the previous day. The country has carried out 9,798,402 tests since Jan. 3 last year.