Seoul has introduced an enhanced social distancing campaign as cases surge
Asian countries that were praised for their adept suppression of Covid-19 are now facing growing criticism for falling behind in the race to roll out vaccines.
Countries like South Korea were the poster children of the first wave of coronavirus for skilfully avoiding draconian national lockdowns.
But with cases now on the rise again and the highly transmissible UK variant spreading around the world, authorities are facing urgent questions about their lagging vaccination programmes.
There is anger in South Korea in particular and a sense of resignation in Japan as it emerged that vaccines won’t be rolled out until late February at the very earliest — months behind the UK and the West.
The South Korean government announced deals late last week for 16 million doses of vaccine from Janssen and Pfizer, with delivery in the second quarter of 2021. The health ministry also announced a deal for 20 million doses of the vaccine developed by Moderna, to be delivered in the second quarter of next year, while a contract was signed in November with AstraZeneca for shipments in late February.
Coronavirus South Korea Spotlight Chart — Cases default
But with new infection numbers reaching a record 1,237 on Christmas Eve, there have been widespread accusations that the government acted far too late.
“The blame for the current jitters among the public lies squarely with the government”, said a recent blistering editorial in the leading Chosun Ilbo newspaper. Accusing the administration of Moon Jae-in of failing to move swiftly to secure vaccines and, it added, “Due to the government’s ineptitude, the Korean public has to suffer longer.
“Nobody knows when this crisis will end, and the government’s dishonesty and laziness have only made things worse”, it added.
There are also growing accusations that the government placed priority on developing a domestic vaccine, but that Korean pharmaceutical firms will not be ready to release vaccines until the latter part of next year.
Similar blame has been levelled at the Japanese government, possibly out of anticipation that a Japanese company would be the first in the world to develop a vaccine.
Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister, “was promoting the home-grown drug Avignan and there was definitely an element of wanting Japan to be ahead of the pack”, said Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at the Tokyo campus of Temple University.
“Unfortunately, Avignan has not panned out in clinical trials and other Japanese pharmaceutical companies have just been slow on the uptake, so a domestic vaccine probably will not be ready until 2022”, he told The Telegraph.
Japan is currently struggling to contain a ‘third wave’ of infections, reporting 3,806 new cases across the country on Boxing Day. There have been 3,397 fatalities.
Coronavirus Japan Spotlight Chart — cases default
The government, however, has not been the target of angry outbursts from the public or the media, even though vaccinations will not be administered until late February and that a mere 8.2 million of the 126.5 million population will be considered as priority cases for the inoculation.
“The Japanese government has confirmed that it has tried to secure supplies of the vaccine, but they have been limited by the budget and the fact that pharmaceutical companies are prioritising demand in their own countries”, said Kazuhiro Tateda, president of the Japan Association of Infectious Diseases and a member of the government’s emergency health committee.
“We accept that these are not our products and that we have to wait”, he added.
There is another reason why Japanese people are not clamouring for the vaccine to be administered, believes Yoko Tsukamoto, a professor of infection control at the Health Sciences University of Hokkaido.
“Japan had a very bad experience in the past with drugs that were released but later were found to cause problems, such as Thalidomide, so people do not want the health authorities to rush to approve this drug”, she said. “I also believe that we need to be very cautious before approving new medicines and, at the moment, I do not believe that there is enough data on these vaccines to take that chance”.
Taiwan, widely praised for its handling of the pandemic, also appears to have been late to sign deals to deliver the vaccine, with the government only confirming the purchase of nearly 20 million doses from AstraZeneca on Wednesday. That is in addition to an earlier agreement for 4.76 million doses from the Covax global vaccine programme, although the medicine is not expected to arrive until March at the earliest.
Health authorities in Taipei have been insulated from public criticism for lagging behind other countries thanks to the low number of infections. To date, there have only been 798 cases of the virus in Taiwan and a mere seven deaths. The country recorded its first case of the more infectious new variant on Wednesday, however.
China has already started its vaccination programmes, despite home-grown vaccines still in late-stage trials.
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