接受流感疫苗後死亡的關注,南韓已死101人
Concern over deaths after receiving flu vaccines
SOUTH KOREA has recorded 101 deaths, most of whom were elderly, after they received seasonal flu vaccines in the country's free vaccination programme.
The deaths have stoked public anxiety over the safety of such vaccines, but the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said 97 of those deaths have very limited relation with the flu shots while the other four cases are still under investigation.
KDCA said that of the total deaths, 84 people were aged over 70, followed by eight under 60 and nine in their 60s.
According to a Yonhap news agency report, health authorities have repeatedly said they have found no direct link between the flu shots and the deaths.
They have said the deaths have been coincidental to the flu shots and also urged people to get the flu vaccinations before the onset of winter amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Concerns over the safety of the flu vaccines have heightened in South Korea after some vaccine bottles were said to have been exposed to room temperature during distribution.
However, health authorities said there were no safety issues.
As part of the government's effort to quell the anxieties over its safety, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, Health Minister Park Neung-hoo and KDCA head Jeong Eun-kyeong also took the shots recently.
KDCA said that more than 12.56 million South Koreans have received the free flu shots, out of about 19 million people, or 64.1 per cent of those eligible to receive it.
The vaccine programme mostly targets the elderly and younger people, who are the most vulnerable age groups, to avoid a feared twin epidemic of both Covid-19 and the flu.
The Korea Medical Association had previously recommended a suspension of the programme but it later issued a directive to its members to resume the flu jabs.
South China Morning Post had reported that the free vaccines are supplied by six South Korean companies and France's Sanofi, while privately supplied flu vaccines are manufactured locally by two South Korean companies and in Germany by UK-based multinational company GlaxoSmithKline.
One of the claims spread online is that the government-provided shots include substandard products bought from China, but a KDCA spokesman told This Week in Asia that the allegation "is simply fake news".
Other rumours have it that government-supplied vaccines are of low quality, but these, too, have been widely dismissed as groundless since South Korea's pharmaceutical industry is generally considered to be on par with those in other advanced countries.
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