President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that the government would complete giving the first Covid-19 shot to more than 20 million people to vaccinate 36 million by the upcoming Chuseok (Korean Thanksgiving Day) on Sept. 21.
President Moon added that the government would reduce inconvenience and overhaul the inoculation system to ensure fair opportunities to receive vaccines as the reservation for those in their 20s and 40s could begin next week as scheduled.
The President’s assurance comes as the nation is mired in the fourth wave of Covid-19 for nearly a month while undergoing a vaccine supply bottleneck.
"Although there is uncertainty in the global supply of Covid-19 vaccines, the quantity for inoculation in August and September would come with a hitch. Therefore, please trust the government and actively participate in the vaccination in an orderly manner, Moon said. “The Covid-19 virus is getting stronger, and new virus cases have risen for the fifth week worldwide due to the Delta variant.”
The President acknowledged his administration had expected the ongoing situation. “We believed the vaccine would resolve the pandemic crisis, but a new, far more contagious variant is attacking even successfully vaccinated countries."
Moon stressed that vaccination could significantly lower the severity and fatality of Covid-19 even if it could not completely prevent infections.
Despite the government’s frantic efforts to flatten the recent resurge of Covid-19 infections, Koreans continued to run and visit pubs illegally, pushing up the country’s cumulative caseload to exceed 200,000.
The Seoul Gangnam Police Station caught 52 people, including business owners, receptionists, and customers, who operated or used unauthorized hostess bars in the southern Seoul district on Friday.
The Korean National Police Agency also dispatched 13,387 officers from July3-31 to inspect entertainment facilities across the country. Police explained that it had arrested 2,383 people on charges of violating the infection control measures.
The strengthened infection prevention policy went into effect on July 7, punishing business owners, employees, and customers caught in illegal business with fines of up to 3 million won ($2,610). However, unlawful business practices in bars and pubs are going on despite the intensive crackdowns and stringent punishments.
Even a new type of illegal service is spreading across the country, such as renting an entire motel floor and selling drinks in the rooms.
The government has vaccinated 19,472,376 people – 10,409,2945 with the AstraZeneca vaccine, 7,075,946 with Pfizer's vaccine, 1,129,762 with Janssen's vaccine 857,374 with Moderna's vaccine – with the first shot of the vaccine up 27,892 from the previous day.
Korea has inoculated about 37.9 percent of the nation's population.
Health authorities are preparing additional measures to contain the fourth wave when infected patients do not significantly drop.
On Monday, the country added 1,219 Covid-19 cases, including 1,150 local infections, raising the total caseload to 201,002, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The daily caseload has remained above 1,000 for more than three weeks since July 7 due to the mass transmissions spreading in the greater Seoul area. The virus has been spreading across the nation with the highly contagious delta variant. One more person died of the coronavirus, pushing the death toll to 2,099 with a fatality rate of 1.04 percent.