SEOUL: South Korea has set the ball rolling for the nationwide Covid vaccination roll out as the first batch of about 1.5 million vaccine doses headed to the country, which is nearing 90,000 cases since the outbreak of the pandemic in January last year.

The nationwide distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine for some 750,000 people, mostly health care workers and patients at nursing homes, came as the country is set to kick off the free inoculation campaign on Friday, Yonhap reported.

The vaccine doses were produced at a local plant by SK Bioscience Co. under a manufacturing partnership deal with British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

The first shipment for a total of 55 container trucks was delayed for around two hours at the site due to extra caution about maintaining storage temperatures, health authorities said. A total of 1.57 million doses of vaccines under AstraZeneca's full two-dose regimen will be delivered to a total of 1,900 long-term care hospitals and public health centers across the country for the next five days.

The first batch of AstraZeneca's vaccine is enough to provide jabs to 785,000 people, which is 35,000 higher than the previous estimate. The AstraZeneca vaccine is deemed more convenient for mass inoculations as its storage temperature is 2 to 8 C, compared with the vaccine by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. that requires ultra-cold chain storage.

According to health authorities, a total of 289,271 people, or 93.6 percent of the patients and people working at facilities including sanatoriums, nursing facilities and rehabilitation facilities will receive the first shot.

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