S. Korea to start COVID-19 vaccinations on Feb. 26

SEOUL. KAZINFORM South Korea will start vaccinating its population against COVID-19 on Feb. 26 if final approval for the use of AstraZeneca's vaccine for elderly people is made this week, health authorities said Tuesday.

The announcement by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) came as the nation reported a slight rise in daily coronavirus cases, with authorities still on high alert ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, Yonhap reports.

It was the first time that the KDCA set a start date for the vaccinations, raising hope that the nation could turn a corner in the yearlong battle against the pandemic.

Employees at SK Bioscience Co.'s factory in Andong, 230 kilometers southeast of Seoul, package AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine on Jan. 20, 2021. (Yonhap)

AstraZeneca will start delivering the first batch of its COVID-19 vaccine to South Korea from Feb. 24. The vaccine will be distributed to hospitals and other medical facilities on Feb. 25, and inoculations will begin a day later, the KDCA said in a statement.

Medical workers and elderly people at nursing homes are expected to get the first doses of the vaccine, with health authorities aiming to achieve herd immunity for the nation's 52 million population by November.

Earlier in the day, the KDCA said the nation added 303 more COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, including 273 local infections, raising the total caseload to 81,487.

It marked an uptick from Monday's 289 new cases, which were the lowest daily infections since Nov. 23 last year.

South Korea added eight more deaths, raising the total to 1,482.

As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, the country had reported 364 new virus cases, up from 202 tallied during the same time period a day earlier.

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