COVID-19 Vaccination in Korea: Past, Present, and the Way Forward

Abstract

Since its first emergence in late 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 has claimed more than 6.5 million lives worldwide and continues to infect hundreds of thousands of people daily. To combat this once-in-a-century disaster, several vaccines have been developed at unprecedented speeds. Novel vaccine platforms (messenger ribonucleic acid vaccines and adenoviral vector vaccines) have played a major role in the current pandemic. In Korea, six vaccines, including a domestically developed recombinant vaccine, have been approved. As in other countries, vaccines have been proven to be safe and highly effective in Korea. However, rare serious adverse events and breakthrough infections have undermined public trust in the vaccines, even while the benefits of vaccination far outweigh the risks. The rise of the omicron variant and the subsequent increase in excess mortality demonstrated that while vaccines are a key component of the pandemic response, it alone can fail without non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking and social distancing. The pandemic of coronavirus disease has revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of our healthcare system and pandemic preparedness. When the next pandemic arrives, improved risk communication and vaccine development should be prioritized. To enable timely vaccine development, it is essential to make strategic and sufficient investments in vaccine research and development.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Safety; Vaccination; Vaccine Efficacy.

Fig. 1. Vaccine effectiveness against laboratory-confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 across severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variants and study population. The numbers displayed at the top right of each item in superscript refer to the citation number.

Fig. 2. Timeline of mass vaccination against COVID-19 in Korea. The blue vertical bars represent the number of daily new COVID-19 cases, the light blue dots represent weekly excess mortality (%), the grey curve represents the cumulative percentage of fully vaccinated individuals (i.e., completed primary series vaccination), and the dark blue arrows represent when each group became eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.

COVID-19 = coronavirus disease 2019, LTCF = long-term care facilities, HCWs = healthcare workers.