New virus cases dip on eve of vaccine rollout

Korea's daily Covid-19 cases fell slightly below 400 on Thursday, a day before the nation's first vaccine rollout.

In the first round of the national vaccination program, the government plans to inoculate 750,000 workers and patients under 65 at nursing hospitals with AstraZeneca's vaccine on Friday, and medical professionals treating Covid-19 patients with Pfizer's vaccine on Saturday.

A top official reiterated that the government would do everything within its power to achieve herd immunity by November. "A good start is important, and the biggest risk in the early stages of vaccination is quarantine," Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said during a daily task force meeting. "We must learn from the experiences of foreign nations undergoing confusion amid loosened alertness after vaccination."

Chung noted that if the fourth viral wave begins during the inoculation, it will have a devastating impact on the nation's medical response system forcing the public to endure greater pain requiring prolonged quarantine efforts.

"Maintaining social trust is also an important task for vaccination success," Chung said. "If people distrust the vaccine and avoid vaccination, herd immunity becomes nothing more than an illusion."

The prime minister promised that the government would disclose everything related to scientific verification transparently. "We request citizens to have faith in the government's verification and actively participate in receiving jabs," Chung said.

Despite government officials’ repeated assurance, the nation's inoculation program encountered a small problem on Wednesday, as the government had to recover part of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine scheduled for transport to Jeju Island due to a temperature problem within the transport container.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KCDA), AstraZeneca's vaccine needs to maintain a temperature of 2-8 degrees Celsius during the distribution process. However, when authorities checked the transport container's temperature, they found the temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The government has not yet decided on whether to discard the recovered vaccine.

Despite the vaccine program, Korea may extend its current social distancing guidelines, the third-highest in the five-tier virus curbs. The greater Seoul area, home to around half of the nation's 52-million population, currently is under Level 2 distancing, which is a notch lower than the previous Level 2.5.

Under the new guidelines, set to run through Sunday, restaurants and bars in Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province are allowed to remain open for an hour longer until 10 p.m.

Bans on gatherings of five or more people, however, are in place nationwide. Health authorities are set to decide whether to extend or lower the current measures and announce the results on Friday.

During the daily meeting, Prime Minister Chung also expressed concerns about protests planned by conservative groups during the March 1 Independence Movement Day next Monday.

"As the third viral wave is not over, an urban rally is feared to spark the re-proliferation of Covid-19 virus," Chung said. "The rally organizers must know the current rule prohibits the gatherings of 10 or more people in Seoul and bans all gatherings at the Gwanghwamun Square."

The KDCA confirmed 396 new patients, including 369 local infections. The cumulative caseload rose to 88,516 as of midnight Wednesday. Imported cases increased to 27 from 23.

The death toll stayed at a single-digit figure as the KCDA reported five more fatalities, pushing the death toll to 1,581 with a fatality rate of 1.79 percent. An additional 437 patients fully recovered and returned to their everyday lives, increasing the total to 79,487. The country has tested 6,551,214 people since Jan. 3 last year.