South Korea’s swift Covid-19 pandemic response might have garnered the world’s attention but the nation still stands heavily dependent on vaccine imports.
Korea faced an $800 million vaccine trade deficit in 2022.
The vaccine industry has often been neglected, but after the pandemic, priorities have shifted.
The Yoon Suk Yeol administration outlined plans to raise 500 billion won ($387.1 million) to form a K-Bio Vaccine Fund by the first half of 2023 and an additional 1 trillion won ($760 million) by 2025 towards fostering vaccine self-sufficiency in Korea.
But how exactly will these funds be used to help prepare Korea for the next pandemic?
At the recently concluded Global Vaccine and Immunization Research Forum (GVIRF), the NIH Korea’s Acting Deputy Minister Jang Hee-chang suggested a similar approach to CEPI’s 100-day mission whereby Korea aims to reduce the development of monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines to 200 days for new pathogens and 100 days for known pathogens.
In particular, Korea is heavily investing in the mRNA platform, much like the U.S. and the U.K.
In this regard, SK Bioscience is developing mRNA vaccines for Lassa fever and Japanese encephalitis virus together with CEPI.
The NIH Korea is partnering with Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine against severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) and the KmVAC has been established to help support domestic mRNA vaccine development.
However, there was no specific mention of support for other vaccine platforms. While the mRNA platform provides a good start, it’s a bit dicey to throw all the support behind the mRNA vaccine platform.
The Covid-19 mRNA vaccine did show the merits of the platform but it’s important to note that there still have not been any other mRNA vaccines produced as yet, although there are many promising candidates in the pipeline with Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine next in line.
However, other vaccine platforms can offer specific advantages.
For example, AstraZeneca’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine is based on an antibody. This is a bit of an unconventional approach for vaccines but monoclonal antibodies do not require the activation of the immune system and can thus more rapidly offer direct protection against pathogens, as studies have shown.
Korea’s pandemic strategy also outlined plans for establishing a vaccine priming center. This is in line with CEPI and NIAID’s strategy to save time in a pandemic by preparing vaccine prototypes against different virus or bacterial families.
Although scientists were already familiar with the virus structure from previous coronaviruses like MERS and SARS, they had to start from scratch.
However, if vaccine prototypes had been made for the coronavirus family of SARS and MERS, then a Covid-19 vaccine might have been possible in 100 days like CEPI is targeting.
While it is evident that Korea is not sitting idly by during the endemic, there still needs to be more urgency as the next pandemic can strike at any time.
One thing that remains sure is that Korea can manufacture vaccines. Otherwise, they would not have been designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a global biomanufacturing training hub that has already trained 347 members from low-and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Despite this capacity, Korea can soon find itself paying a 2.4 trillion won bill with the expected price hikes for Covid-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer this year.
The price of remaining vaccine dependent is high.
Therefore, the Korean government should focus also on short-term objectives with more immediate effects for fostering the domestic vaccine industry.
Developing vaccines is usually not a very profitable industry and thus the Korean government should look into partnering with domestic manufacturers to ensure that the vaccine trade deficit can be offset or at least improved in the coming years.