The government said it will reduce the interval between Covid-19 vaccinations from the current 120 days to 90 days, regardless of the number of vaccinations, from Thursday this week.
The new measure comes after an analysis of neutralizing antibodies against the Omicron variant for high-risk groups showed that the neutralizing antibody titer starts to decrease seven weeks after receiving the second booster shot.
The government's prediction that the winter epidemic peak may come earlier than expected also played a role in the decision.
Health officials said they decided to use booster inoculations during the winter season with only the improved bivalent vaccines, which produce higher neutralizing antibody titers than existing monovalent vaccines.
As a result, Korea will no longer provide Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax, and SK Bioscience's monovalent vaccine from Dec. 17.
Accordingly, reservations of monovalent vaccines for the first and second booster vaccinations will be suspended from Monday next week.
As the government has been actively encouraging vaccination, such as operating an intensive vaccination period from Monday, the vaccination rate has recently been on the rise.
While the vaccination rate for those aged 60 or older in the first week of November (Nov. 1-7) was 10.7 percent, it rose to 17.1 percent in the third week of November (Nov. 15-21).
In the case of vulnerable facilities, the vaccination rate rose significantly from 7.2 percent to 17.4 percent during the same period, and the average number of vaccinations per day increased from around 2,000 to over 5,000.
On Wednesday, Korea added 70,324 new Covid-19 infections, including 69 cases from abroad, bringing the total caseload to 26,725,053, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The nation also reported 53 more Covid-19 deaths, raising the death toll to 30,164. The fatality rate stood at 0.11 percent. The number of critically ill patients came to 477, up 16 from the previous day, the KDCA said.
According to the KDCA, about 44.69 million among 52 million Koreans have been fully vaccinated. In addition, about 33.69 million people had received their first booster shots, and 7.58 million had their second booster shots.