HONG KONG | Hong Kong and South Korea kicked off their COVID-19 vaccination campaign on Friday.
• Read also: [EN DIRECT 26 FÉVRIER] All the developments of the pandemic
South Korea plans to vaccinate 70% of its population in the next seven months, while Hong Kong hopes all adults will be vaccinated by the end of the year.
These two territories were among the first to record cases of the coronavirus after it emerged last year in central China.
They have managed to contain its spread thanks to strict quarantine measures for travelers arriving from abroad, public compliance with social distancing measures and a very effective testing and screening strategy.
These vaccination campaigns begin a few days after those in Australia and New Zealand.
While the United States and Europe have already vaccinated millions of people, many countries in Asia-Pacific are falling behind.
China is so far the second country in the world to have administered the most doses, more than 40 million. However, it did not reach its goal of 50 million people vaccinated before mid-February.
Japan began to vaccinate in mid-February.
In South Korea, television broadcast Friday morning the launch of the vaccination campaign in a medical center in Seoul, in the presence of President Moon Jae-in.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-ky urged all citizens to get vaccinated, urging them to “all take a step forward to know these days again.”
In Hong Kong, the first doses were administered to the population on Friday.
The authorities could have difficulty convincing the inhabitants to accept this vaccine produced by a Chinese laboratory as the public’s mistrust of Beijing is great.
Last week, the former British colony approved the emergency use of Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine despite poor results in terms of efficacy.
A first batch of one million doses arrived in Hong Kong 24 hours later.
Data provided by Sinovac show an efficacy rate of between 50 and 62%.
So far, demand has been strong, some 70,000 Hong Kongers have stormed the first available dates.
“I have absolute confidence in the products of our mother country,” said an elderly woman who was being vaccinated on Friday.
The Hong Kong authorities have pre-ordered 22.5 million vaccines from three laboratories: Sinovac, BioNTech and AstraZeneca.