S. Korean syringe boosts vaccine doses
South Korea has produced a new type of syringe that can increase the number of vaccine doses from a vaccine bottle.
On Saturday, the health authorities issued a new guideline to vaccination centres, asking medical staff members to maximise the number of jabs per vaccine bottle by using the state-of-theart locally-produced syringe.
Just a day South Korea started its public vaccination programme, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said the locally-produced syringe had paved the way to increase the number of vaccine recipients by up to two people per bottle.
According to a Yonhap News Agency report, KDCA said the breakthrough was made possible by the so-called low dead-space (LDS) syringes designed to minimise wasted vaccine doses by reducing the space between the needle and the plunger in a syringe.
It was previously estimated that a bottle of AstraZeneca’s vaccine was enough to provide jabs to 10 people, while that of Pfizer’s came to six people.
However, with the LDS syringe, KDCA believes that a bottle of Astra-Zeneca’s vaccine can provide jabs for up to 12 people, while that of Pfizer’s can increase up to seven people.
“The previous estimate was based on ordinary syringes. Thus, the number of recipients can increase when we apply the LDS model,” an official from the Central Disease Control headquarters said.
Authorities, however, said the actual number of additional recipients could vary depending on the skills of the medical staff carrying out the vaccination.
“Although the new progress can add a few thousands jabs for now, the figure is expected to expand significantly down the road when more Pfizer vaccines are supplied here,” said Chun Eunmi, a professor at the Ewha Womans University Medical Centre.
South Korea has ordered enough vaccines to inoculate 79 million people, much higher than the nation’s population of 52 million.