Workers OK’d to salvage extra doses

Vaccination campaign underway in S. Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency allowed health workers to squeeze extra doses from vials of coronavirus vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

The decision on Saturday came after some health workers who were administering the AstraZeneca shots reported to authorities that they still saw additional doses left in the bottles that had been used for 10 injections each.

Agency official Jeong Gyeong-shil said skilled workers may be able to squeeze one or two extra doses from each vial if they use syringes designed to reduce wasted medications and vaccines.

But she said the agency isn’t allowing health workers to combine vaccines left in different bottles to create more doses.

The KDCA had authorized 10 injections for each AstraZeneca vial and six for each Pfizer vial.

South Korea, which launched its public vaccination campaign on Friday, is administering the AstraZeneca shots to residents and workers at long-term care facilities and the Pfizer ones to front-line medical workers.

South Korea on Saturday reported another 405 coronavirus cases.

In other developments around the Asia-Pacific region:

■ Over 500,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine arrived Saturday in Hong Kong after a two-day delay because of export procedures, offering a second inoculation option for the city. The Pfizer-BioNTech shots will be offered to about 2.4 million eligible residents from priority groups such as those ages 60 and above and health care workers. About 70,000 residents who have registered for the vaccination program, which kicked off on Friday, will receive the shots developed by Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Sinovac. The Sinovac vaccines were the first to arrive last week.

■ New Zealand’s largest city,

Auckland, is going back into a seven-day lockdown after a new unexplained coronavirus case was found. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement Saturday evening after an urgent meeting with lawmakers in the Cabinet. She said the lockdown would take effect from Sunday morning. Auckland this month was placed into a threeday lockdown after new cases of the more contagious variant first found in Britain were discovered. New Zealand has pursued a zero-tolerance elimination strategy with the virus and had stamped out community spread before the latest cases were found this month. The rest of New Zealand will also have increased restrictions.

■ Sri Lanka’s Health Ministry has decided to vaccinate everyone ages 30 and above in the high-risk areas of the capital, Colombo, and suburbs where COVID-19 cases are rising. There were 466 new cases in the past 24 hours. Sri Lankan began its inoculation drive in January starting with health workers. More than 406,000 people have received their shots.

Song Kyung-Seok The Associated Press A medical worker receives a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center Saturday in Seoul, South Korea.